Is Active Management Dead? Not Even Close

Several years ago, I interviewed C. Thomas Howard of AthenaInvest to learn more about his firm’s unique implementation of behavioral finance. This turned out to be one of the best performing pieces of content Enterprising Investor has ever run. But it isn’t just AthenaInvest’s originality that’s so compelling, so too is its strong performance. Howard also has an interesting...
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Alpha Wounds: Lack of Independent Judgment

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

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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Meditation for Investment Professionals

There has been an explosion of interest in meditation among the business community over the past several years. What most in the finance industry do not realize, however, is that meditation provides unique benefits that directly address many of the obstacles we all face each day. More on that in a moment. But first, just who in finance and business pursues the practice? Who in Investing...
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Alpha Wounds: Short-Termism

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

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

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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