Alpha Wounds: Lack of Independent Judgment

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Jun 7, 2016 in Alpha Wounds, Best of the Blog, Blog | 0 comments My entire series on Alpha Wounds is intended to provide solutions that can be implemented by anyone in the investment community to improve the returns of active investment managers for the benefit of clients. This month I focus on the lack of independent judgment and due diligence among active managers. Unfortunately, I need to rely on my own personal experience and anecdotes rather than...
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Alpha Wounds: Culture vs. Philosophy Mismatch

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Mar 29, 2016 in Alpha Wounds, Best of the Blog, Blog | 0 comments My entire series on Alpha Wounds is intended to provide solutions that can be implemented by anyone in the investment community to improve the returns of active investment managers for the benefit of clients. This month’s post focuses on choices over which the investment adviser has nearly full control. Specifically, I am talking about matching the culture of an investment management firm with...
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Alpha Wounds: Short-Termism

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Feb 16, 2016 in Alpha Wounds, Best of the Blog, Blog | 0 comments I apologize for the intervening gap between my last Alpha Wounds post about the active quality of passive investment management and this one. Given the length of the wait, let me dive straight into the discussion. This month I want to highlight the advancement of short-termism into the investment management business and its deleterious effects on alpha. Why Short-Termism Is Detrimental Higher...
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Alpha Wounds: Passive Management Is Not Passive

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Nov 3, 2015 in Alpha Wounds, Best of the Blog, Blog | 0 comments Alpha wounds are decisions made by the investment industry that hurt active investment managers. It is my belief that there is still plenty of alpha left to be harvested by discerning research analysts and portfolio managers. So far I have discussed the deleterious effects of managing to, rather than from, a benchmark; poor evaluative methodologies by investment industry adjuncts; and the poor...
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Alpha Wounds: A Lack of Diversity in the Human Resources Portfolio

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Sep 22, 2015 in Alpha Wounds, Best of the Blog, Blog | 0 comments For the last several months, I have discussed reasons why active investment managers underperform their passive investment manager competition. Alpha wounds discussed so far include navigating toward benchmarks instead of away from them — shame on you active managers! — and the use of inappropriate measures of success – shame on you investment industry adjuncts! This month I turn to a problem...
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Alpha Wounds: Bad Adjunct Methodologies

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Sep 2, 2015 in Alpha Wounds, Best of the Blog, Blog | 0 comments Active management has taken a lot of body blows recently. The principal criticism: Active managers contribute no alpha once their fees are factored in. So is it time to write active management’s obituary? Not quite. But active management certainly is feeling pain. A few weeks ago, I argued that many of the alpha wounds plaguing active management are self-inflicted. But this month, I will...
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Alpha Wounds: Benchmark Tail Wags the Portfolio Management Dog

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Jul 28, 2015 in Alpha Wounds, Best of the Blog, Blog | 0 comments Active management is under siege from many corners, including passive investment advocates, robo-advisers, academics, and individual investors. The narrative, of course, is that active managers add no alpha after fees. Is active management dead? Hardly. But active management is certainly wounded. And many of these alpha wounds are self-inflicted. This and other forthcoming articles will seek to...
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