January, 2017

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Firearms Versus Bow and Arrows

The Irrelevant Investor

"Every stock market system with an edge is necessarily limited in the amount of money it can use and still produce extra returns." - Ed Thorp In the decade after Ed thorp launched Princeton Newport Partners, the fund gained 409%, annualizing at 17.7% before fees and 14.1% after. Not bad for a market neutral portfolio. Over the same period, the S&P 500 annualized at just 4.6%, including dividends.

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Full Faith in Credit

Brown Advisory

Full Faith in Credit achen Thu, 01/26/2017 - 10:33 As investors continue to seek yield opportunities while facing historically low interest rates, municipals have been a beneficiary of inflows and seen a proliferation of issuers. In many instances, however, this backdrop of increased issuance has belied decreased transparency–particularly in general obligation (GO) issues.

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Full Faith in Credit

Brown Advisory

Full Faith in Credit. achen. Thu, 01/26/2017 - 10:33. As investors continue to seek yield opportunities while facing historically low interest rates, municipals have been a beneficiary of inflows and seen a proliferation of issuers. In many instances, however, this backdrop of increased issuance has belied decreased transparency–particularly in general obligation (GO) issues.

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Influence, Temptation, And Persuasion

The Irrelevant Investor

Robert Cialdini's Influence: The Psychology of Pe rsuasion, has removed any lingering doubt I had that we are reasonable creatures. Cialdini shares so many examples of experiments that at times I literally stood up in disbelief. Here's a good one: More compelling evidence for the importance of similarity in determining whether we will imitate another's behavior comes from scientific research.

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8 Ways to Torture Your CFO

The office of the CFO is rapidly evolving, with more and more demands being placed upon the finance and accounting team each year. Join us in this webinar, where we share 8 things to NOT do when it comes to helping the CFO office advance in supporting the business. Learning Objectives: This course objective is to understand how best to support an organization's finance leadership.

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SPY, 24 Years Later

The Irrelevant Investor

What started as an experiment has proved to be an unequivocal success. Twenty-four years ago today, SPY was listed on the American Stock Exchange. Today, there are more than 6,000 ETFs/ETNs, which give investors the ability to trade baskets of stocks all day, unlike traditional mutual funds. ETFs now hold $3 trillion in assets, with SPY at the top of the heap, at $220 billion.

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Chasers Gonna Chase

The Irrelevant Investor

Eric Balchunas shares smart-beta flows since the election. [link] Not surprisingly, this lines up pretty well with how these different risk factors have performed over this time. ETFs have given investors the perfect vehicle with which to chase performance. These billions of dollars are being driven by professional investors, I'd guess individual brokerage accounts are responsible for less than 10% of these flows.

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The Most Powerful Force In The Universe

The Irrelevant Investor

Anyone can solve the equation 6+6+6+6. But ask somebody to calculate 6x6x6x6 without a machine and they're going to look at you cross-eyed. The human brain was designed for linear, not exponential processing. The other day I joked about the Dow reaching 2,000,000 by the year 2099, a one hundred fold gain from today's prices. I was only kidding, but Morgan Housel told me for that to occur, the Dow would need to compound at 5.7% for the next 83 years.

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Looking For The Next Amazon

The Irrelevant Investor

Amazon is the sixth largest company in the S&P 500 by market cap. Incredibly, they wear this crown despite having earned less than 121 different companies over the previous twelve months. It's no secret that Amazon is an expensive stock. Even if Bezos were to capture 100% of the total retail revenue, its price-to-earnings ratio would still be 63!

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The Final Results Are In

The Irrelevant Investor

Last week, Morningstar published their Asset Flows Commentary for 2016. As you can see in the chart below, active funds have had more outflows in each of the last two years than they did in 2008. Below, I pulled some of the notable numbers (emphasis mine). Among U.S. equity funds, passively managed funds–led by Vanguard’s offerings–took in $50.8 billion during December, which topped the previous monthly record of $41.9 billion set in November.

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The Ignorance of The Future

The Irrelevant Investor

“Three causes especially have excited the discontent of mankind; and, by impelling us to seek remedies for the irremediable, have bewildered us in a maze of madness and error. These are death, toil, and the ignorance of the future” - Charles Mackay People spend a lot of time thinking about the future, it's part of what makes us human. The problem is we're not very good at dealing with uncertainty.

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How to Streamline Payment Applications & Lien Waivers Through Innovative Construction Technology

Speaker: Dylan Secrest, Founder of Alamo Innovation and Construction Digital Transformation Consultant

Construction payment workflows are notoriously complex when you consider juggling multiple stakeholders, compliance requirements, and evolving project scopes. Delays in approvals or misaligned data between budgets, lien waivers, and pay applications can grind progress to a halt. The good news? It doesn't have to be this way! Join expert Dylan Secrest to discover how leading contractors are turning payment chaos into clarity using digital workflows, integrated systems, and automation strategies.