The only comprehensive guide to reaping big returns investing in the hottest new growth markets This book makes a compelling case that, just as today's well-rounded portfolio includes emerging market funds, tomorrow's well-rounded portfolio will include frontier market funds. More importantly, it alerts you to the vast opportunities and potential pitfalls of investing in frontier markets while providing expert advice and guidance on how to research and invest in the most promising frontier growth markets. Widely considered to be the next emerging markets, frontier markets, such as those of certain sub-Saharan African, Eastern European, Asian, and Central and South American countries, are showing strong signs of reaching economic critical mass. If you are an investor on the lookout for authoritative, actionable information on the next big investment opportunity, this book is for you. Provides sector-by-sector analyses that let you assess opportunities and risks in each frontier market Provides strategies and tools for determining the most efficient methods for executing, monitoring, and exiting investments Guides you through the wide diversity within frontier markets, showing how to differentiate countries on the basis of economic development and wealth distribution and other factors
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.
The individual investor's comprehensive guide to momentum investing Quantitative Momentum brings momentum investing out of Wall Street and into the hands of individual investors. In his last book, Quantitative Value, author Wes Gray brought systematic value strategy from the hedge funds to the masses; in this book, he does the same for momentum investing, the system that has been shown to beat the market and regularly enriches the coffers of Wall Street's most sophisticated investors. First, you'll learn what momentum investing is not: it's not 'growth' investing, nor is it an esoteric academic concept. You may have seen it used for asset allocation, but this book details the ways in which momentum stands on its own as a stock selection strategy, and gives you the expert insight you need to make it work for you. You'll dig into its behavioral psychology roots, and discover the key tactics that are bringing both institutional and individual investors flocking into the momentum fold. Systematic investment strategies always seem to look good on paper, but many fall down in practice. Momentum investing is one of the few systematic strategies with legs, withstanding the test of time and the rigor of academic investigation. This book provides invaluable guidance on constructing your own momentum strategy from the ground up. Learn what momentum is and is not Discover how momentum can beat the market Take momentum beyond asset allocation into stock selection Access the tools that ease DIY implementation The large Wall Street hedge funds tend to portray themselves as the sophisticated elite, but momentum investing allows you to 'borrow' one of their top strategies to enrich your own portfolio. Quantitative Momentum is the individual investor's guide to boosting market success with a robust momentum strategy.
Exchange traded funds have been called the next generation of mutual funds. Essentially, ETFs are low cost, tax-efficient index funds that trade on a stock exchange. In 1999, there were 33 ETFs trading on North American stock exchanges with assets of US39.6 billion. Five years later, despite going through the worst equity bear market in 70 years, ETFs number over 300 and assets have soared in excess of US300 billion globally. Canada was home to the first successful ETF in the world. Now the largest Canadian ETF, the i60 Fund, is one of the most heavily traded TSX issues.
DIY Financial Advisor: A Simple Solution to Build and Protect Your Wealth DIY Financial Advisor is a synopsis of our research findings developed while serving as a consultant and asset manager for family offices. By way of background, a family office is a company, or group of people, who manage the wealth a family has gained over generations. The term 'family office' has an element of cachet, and even mystique, because it is usually associated with the mega-wealthy. However, practically speaking, virtually any family that manages its investments—independent of the size of the investment pool—could be considered a family office. The difference is mainly semantic. DIY Financial Advisor outlines a step-by-step process through which investors can take control of their hard-earned wealth and manage their own family office. Our research indicates that what matters in investing are minimizing psychology traps and managing fees and taxes. These simple concepts apply to all families, not just the ultra-wealthy. But can—or should—we be managing our own wealth? Our natural inclination is to succumb to the challenge of portfolio management and let an 'expert' deal with the problem. For a variety of reasons we discuss in this book, we should resist the gut reaction to hire experts. We suggest that investors maintain direct control, or at least a thorough understanding, of how their hard-earned wealth is managed. Our book is meant to be an educational journey that slowly builds confidence in one's own ability to manage a portfolio. We end our book with a potential solution that could be applicable to a wide-variety of investors, from the ultra-high net worth to middle class individuals, all of whom are focused on similar goals of preserving and growing their capital over time. DIY Financial Advisor is a unique resource. This book is the only comprehensive guide to implementing simple quantitative models that can beat the experts. And it comes at the perfect time, as the investment industry is undergoing a significant shift due in part to the use of automated investment strategies that do not require a financial advisor's involvement. DIY Financial Advisor is an essential text that guides you in making your money work for you—not for someone else!
The classic case for why government must support science—with a new essay by physicist and former congressman Rush Holt on what democracy needs from science today Science, the Endless Frontier is recognized as the landmark argument for the essential role of science in society and government’s responsibility to support scientific endeavors. First issued when Vannevar Bush was the director of the US Office of Scientific Research and Development during the Second World War, this classic remains vital in making the case that scientific progress is necessary to a nation’s health, security, and prosperity. Bush’s vision set the course for US science policy for more than half a century, building the world’s most productive scientific enterprise. Today, amid a changing funding landscape and challenges to science’s very credibility, Science, the Endless Frontier resonates as a powerful reminder that scientific progress and public well-being alike depend on the successful symbiosis between science and government. This timely new edition presents this iconic text alongside a new companion essay from scientist and former congressman Rush Holt, who offers a brief introduction and consideration of what society needs most from science now. Reflecting on the report’s legacy and relevance along with its limitations, Holt contends that the public’s ability to cope with today’s issues—such as public health, the changing climate and environment, and challenging technologies in modern society—requires a more capacious understanding of what science can contribute. Holt considers how scientists should think of their obligation to society and what the public should demand from science, and he calls for a renewed understanding of science’s value for democracy and society at large. A touchstone for concerned citizens, scientists, and policymakers, Science, the Endless Frontier endures as a passionate articulation of the power and potential of science.
"[This book] examines the costs and benefits of both a targeted and a universal prekindergarten program and shows the positive impact of these programs on the economy, federal and state budgets, and the educational achievement and earnings of children and adults."--Book jacket.
This booklet takes portfolio design beyond the familiar "black box" mean-variance framework. Most importantly, the short-term volatility of financial assets, commonly measured as standard deviation, is a highly imperfect measure of the actual long-horizon perils faced by real-world investors subject to the vagaries of financial and military history. These risks have names--inflation, deflation, confiscation, and devastation--and any useful discussion of portfolio design of necessity incorporates their probabilities, consequences, and costs of mitigation ... This booklet contains ... with luck, a framework within income and all-equity portfolios. This booklet contains ... with luck, a framework within which to think more clearly about risk. Note: the entire Investing for Adults series is not for beginners.
This book contains the recent contributions of Edwin J. Elton and Martin J. Gruber to the field of investments. All of the articles in this book have been published in the leading finance and economic journals. Sixteen of the twenty articles have been published in the last ten years. This book supplements the earlier contributions of the editors published by MIT Press in 1999.
