Lifecycle Investing

Lifecycle Investing
Author: Ian Ayres
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2010-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1458758427

Diversification provides a well-known way of getting something close to a free lunch: by spreading money across different kinds of investments, investors can earn the same return with lower risk (or a much higher return for the same amount of risk). This strategy, introduced nearly fifty years ago, led to such strategies as index funds. What if we were all missing out on another free lunch that’s right under our noses? InLifecycle Investing, Barry Nalebuff and Ian Ayres-two of the most innovative thinkers in business, law, and economics-have developed tools that will allow nearly any investor to diversify their portfolios over time. By using leveraging when young-a controversial idea that sparked hate mail when the authors first floated it in the pages ofForbes-investors of all stripes, from those just starting to plan to those getting ready to retire, can substantially reduce overall risk while improving their returns. InLifecycle Investing, readers will learn How to figure out the level of exposure and leverage that’s right foryou How the Lifecycle Investing strategy would have performed in the historical market Why it will work even if everyone does it Whennotto adopt the Lifecycle Investing strategy Clearly written and backed by rigorous research,Lifecycle Investingpresents a simple but radical idea that will shake up how we think about retirement investing even as it provides a healthier nest egg in a nicely feathered nest.

Strategic Asset Allocation

Strategic Asset Allocation
Author: John Y. Campbell
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2002-01-03
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 019160691X

Academic finance has had a remarkable impact on many financial services. Yet long-term investors have received curiously little guidance from academic financial economists. Mean-variance analysis, developed almost fifty years ago, has provided a basic paradigm for portfolio choice. This approach usefully emphasizes the ability of diversification to reduce risk, but it ignores several critically important factors. Most notably, the analysis is static; it assumes that investors care only about risks to wealth one period ahead. However, many investors—-both individuals and institutions such as charitable foundations or universities—-seek to finance a stream of consumption over a long lifetime. In addition, mean-variance analysis treats financial wealth in isolation from income. Long-term investors typically receive a stream of income and use it, along with financial wealth, to support their consumption. At the theoretical level, it is well understood that the solution to a long-term portfolio choice problem can be very different from the solution to a short-term problem. Long-term investors care about intertemporal shocks to investment opportunities and labor income as well as shocks to wealth itself, and they may use financial assets to hedge their intertemporal risks. This should be important in practice because there is a great deal of empirical evidence that investment opportunities—-both interest rates and risk premia on bonds and stocks—-vary through time. Yet this insight has had little influence on investment practice because it is hard to solve for optimal portfolios in intertemporal models. This book seeks to develop the intertemporal approach into an empirical paradigm that can compete with the standard mean-variance analysis. The book shows that long-term inflation-indexed bonds are the riskless asset for long-term investors, it explains the conditions under which stocks are safer assets for long-term than for short-term investors, and it shows how labor income influences portfolio choice. These results shed new light on the rules of thumb used by financial planners. The book explains recent advances in both analytical and numerical methods, and shows how they can be used to understand the portfolio choice problems of long-term investors.

Managing Investment Portfolios

Managing Investment Portfolios
Author: John L. Maginn
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 1255
Release: 2010-03-18
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0470635347

"A rare blend of a well-organized, comprehensive guide to portfolio management and a deep, cutting-edge treatment of the key topics by distinguished authors who have all practiced what they preach. The subtitle, A Dynamic Process, points to the fresh, modern ideas that sparkle throughout this new edition. Just reading Peter Bernstein's thoughtful Foreword can move you forward in your thinking about this critical subject." —Martin L. Leibowitz, Morgan Stanley "Managing Investment Portfolios remains the definitive volume in explaining investment management as a process, providing organization and structure to a complex, multipart set of concepts and procedures. Anyone involved in the management of portfolios will benefit from a careful reading of this new edition." —Charles P. Jones, CFA, Edwin Gill Professor of Finance, College of Management, North Carolina State University

CFA Program Curriculum 2017 Level III, Volumes 1 - 6

CFA Program Curriculum 2017 Level III, Volumes 1 - 6
Author: CFA Institute
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 2486
Release: 2016-08-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1119315964

Apply CFA Program concepts and skills to real-world wealth and portfolio management for the 2017 exam The same official curricula that CFA Program candidates receive with program registration is now publicly available for purchase. CFA Program Curriculum 2017 Level III, Volumes 1-6 provides complete, authoritative guidance on synthesizing the entire CFA Program Candidate Body of Knowledge (CBOK) into professional practice for the 2017 exam. This book helps you bring together the skills and concepts from Levels I and II to formulate a detailed, professional response to a variety of real-world scenarios. Coverage spans all CFA Program topics and provides a rigorous treatment of portfolio management, all organized into individual study sessions with clearly defined Learning Outcome Statements. Visual aids clarify complex concepts, and practice questions allow you to test your understanding while reinforcing major content areas. Levels I and II equipped you with foundational investment tools and complex analysis skill; now, you'll learn how to effectively synthesize that knowledge to facilitate effective portfolio management and wealth planning. This study set helps you convert your understanding into a professional body of knowledge that will benefit your clients' financial futures. Master essential portfolio management and compliance topics Synthesize your understanding into professional guidance Reinforce your grasp of complex analysis and valuation Apply ethical and professional standards in the context of real-world cases CFA Institute promotes the highest standards of ethics, education, and professional excellence among investment professionals. The CFA Program Curriculum guides you through the breadth of knowledge required to uphold these standards. The three levels of the program build on each other. Level I provides foundational knowledge and teaches the use of investment tools; Level II focuses on application of concepts and analysis, particularly in the valuation of assets; and Level III builds toward synthesis across topics with an emphasis on portfolio management.

Efficient Asset Management

Efficient Asset Management
Author: Richard O. Michaud
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2008-03-03
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0199887195

In spite of theoretical benefits, Markowitz mean-variance (MV) optimized portfolios often fail to meet practical investment goals of marketability, usability, and performance, prompting many investors to seek simpler alternatives. Financial experts Richard and Robert Michaud demonstrate that the limitations of MV optimization are not the result of conceptual flaws in Markowitz theory but unrealistic representation of investment information. What is missing is a realistic treatment of estimation error in the optimization and rebalancing process. The text provides a non-technical review of classical Markowitz optimization and traditional objections. The authors demonstrate that in practice the single most important limitation of MV optimization is oversensitivity to estimation error. Portfolio optimization requires a modern statistical perspective. Efficient Asset Management, Second Edition uses Monte Carlo resampling to address information uncertainty and define Resampled Efficiency (RE) technology. RE optimized portfolios represent a new definition of portfolio optimality that is more investment intuitive, robust, and provably investment effective. RE rebalancing provides the first rigorous portfolio trading, monitoring, and asset importance rules, avoiding widespread ad hoc methods in current practice. The Second Edition resolves several open issues and misunderstandings that have emerged since the original edition. The new edition includes new proofs of effectiveness, substantial revisions of statistical estimation, extensive discussion of long-short optimization, and new tools for dealing with estimation error in applications and enhancing computational efficiency. RE optimization is shown to be a Bayesian-based generalization and enhancement of Markowitz's solution. RE technology corrects many current practices that may adversely impact the investment value of trillions of dollars under current asset management. RE optimization technology may also be useful in other financial optimizations and more generally in multivariate estimation contexts of information uncertainty with Bayesian linear constraints. Michaud and Michaud's new book includes numerous additional proposals to enhance investment value including Stein and Bayesian methods for improved input estimation, the use of portfolio priors, and an economic perspective for asset-liability optimization. Applications include investment policy, asset allocation, and equity portfolio optimization. A simple global asset allocation problem illustrates portfolio optimization techniques. A final chapter includes practical advice for avoiding simple portfolio design errors. With its important implications for investment practice, Efficient Asset Management 's highly intuitive yet rigorous approach to defining optimal portfolios will appeal to investment management executives, consultants, brokers, and anyone seeking to stay abreast of current investment technology. Through practical examples and illustrations, Michaud and Michaud update the practice of optimization for modern investment management.

Rational Expectations

Rational Expectations
Author: William J. Bernstein
Publisher:
Total Pages: 214
Release: 2014-05-28
Genre: Asset allocation
ISBN: 9780988780323

Rational Expectations is a clean sheet of paper in the wonky world of quantitatively based asset allocation aimed at small investors. Continuing the theme of the Investing for Adults series, this full-length finance title is not for beginners, but rather assumes a fair degree of quantitative ability and finance knowledge. If you think you can time the market or pick stocks and mutual fund managers, or even if you think that you can formulate an optimally efficient mean-variance asset allocation with a black box, then learn some basic finance and come back in a few years. On the other hand, if you know your way around risk premiums and standard deviations and know who Irving Fisher and Benjamin Graham were, and if you want to sharpen your asset class skills, you've come to the right place.

Private Wealth

Private Wealth
Author: Stephen M. Horan
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 578
Release: 2009-01-09
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0470381132

An in-depth examination of today's most important wealth management issues Managing the assets of high-net-worth individuals has become a core business specialty for investment and financial advisors worldwide. Keeping abreast of the latest research in this field is paramount. That's why Private Wealth, the inaugural offering in the CFA Institute Investment Perspectives series has been created. As a sister series to the globally successful CFA Institute Investment Series, CFA Institute and John Wiley are proud to offer this new collection. Private Wealth presents the latest information on lifecycle modeling, asset allocation, investment management for taxable private investors, and much more. Researched and written by leading academics and practitioners, including Roger Ibbotson of Yale University and Zvi Bodie of Boston University, this volume covers human capital and mortality risk in life cycle stages and proposes a life-cycle model for life transitions. It also addresses complex tax matters and provides details on customizing investment theory applications to the taxable investor. Finally, this reliable resource analyzes the use of tax-deferred investment accounts as a means for wealth accumulation and presents a useful framework for various tax environments.

Evaluating the Financial Performance of Pension Funds

Evaluating the Financial Performance of Pension Funds
Author: Richard Hinz
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2010-01-14
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0821381601

Countries around the world are increasingly relying on individual pension savings accounts to provide income in old age for their citizens. Although these funds have now been in place for several decades, their performance is usually measured using methods that are not meaningful in relation to this long-term objective. The recent global financial crisis has highlighted the need to develop better performance evaluation methods that are consistent with the retirement income objective of pension funds. Compiling research derived from a partnership among the World Bank, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and three private partners, 'Evaluating the Financial Performance of Pension Funds' discusses the theoretical basis and key implementation issues related to the design of performance benchmarks based on life-cycle savings and investment principles. The book begins with an evaluation of the financial performance of funded pension systems using the standard mean variance framework. It then provides a discussion of the limitations inherent to applying these methods to pension funds and outlines the many other issues that should be addressed in developing more useful and meaningful performance measures through the formulation of pension-specific benchmark portfolios. Practical implementation issues are addressed through empirical examples of how such benchmarks could be developed. The book concludes with commentary and observations from several noted pension experts about the need for a new approach to performance measurement and the impact of the recent global financial crisis on pension funds.