Harold R. Evensky, in his Wealth Management: The Financial Advisor’s Guide to Investing and Managing Client Assets book, makes a distinction between index and passive investing. Few readers are unaware of the differences between active and passive management, but the subtle definitions between index and passive management deserves some attention. I subscribe to the principles […]
Serious Investors Benchmark Their Portfolio
Establishing an appropriate benchmark for a portfolio is essential if one is serious about investing. Avoiding portfolio bench-marking is an act of self-deception. Exactly what is the purpose of a benchmark and what are the requirements for a fair and reasonable benchmark. Here is one definition of bench-marking. In the investing world, the S&P 500 […]
Buffett vs. Steadman
For every Warren Buffet there are a hundred Charlie Steadman’s in the investing world. While nearly every investor has heard of Buffett, few remember Charlie Steadman. Is there a reason for this short memory? “Until he died at age 83 in 1997, Charlie Steadman burned through investors’ assets at a rate unseen in the fund […]
Correlation Matrix of Critical ETFs
As requested in a comment, here is the correlation matrix of critical ETFs used in nearly all the ITA portfolios. I cut the time frame to 23 months of data so VSS and VNQI did not show up with “short-term” data errors. Identical percentages were assigned to each ETF with exception of SDS. The percentages […]
Portfolio Construction: The Essential Decisions
William J. Bernstein, in his most recent book, “The Investor’s Manifesto” writes, “Before diving into the most important issue faced by any investor–the asset allocation decision–you will need to understand four things: save as much as you can, make sure you have enough liquid taxable assets for emergencies, diversify widely, and do so with passive […]
Retirement Planning Mistake #5
Investors pick individual stocks to build portfolios rather than use index funds. Our preference is to use commission free ETFs. Next to not following “The Golden Rule of Investing,” the error of not using index funds is likely the biggest mistake investors make. Remember – The Market is smarter than you are. While there are […]
Strategic Asset Allocation: A Starting Point For Portfolio Construction
Much is made of the importance of asset allocation here at ITA Wealth Management. Long-time readers are familiar with the general layout of the portfolios and new readers will find more information by doing a search for “Dashboard.” Not all portfolios tracked on this blog use the seventeen asset allocation classes, but we want to […]
Risk Parity: A 60/40 Stock/Bond Portfolio Is Not Conservative
This blog will make a lot more sense if you are able to capture and read Edward Qian’s article, Risk Parity Allocation. This blog post is a brief description of how risk is calculated. This not for the mathematically squeamish, but the concept is not difficult if one can get past one step in the logic. […]
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