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Indexing has saved investors $403 BILLION since 1996
Asset management, as Robin Powell, recently wrote, is the scary bill you never see. It’s huge, and if investors were actually presented, every month, with a pounds-and-pence or dollars-and-cents figure for how much they’re paying, most would be horrified. The good news is, of course, that there is a very much cheaper...
Financial context is everything
How you think about money is heavily influenced by your financial context. And that can only be changed if you have a clear vision for what you need from your money. Who hasn’t thought about how much easier their lives...
Should you still invest in bonds?
Investing in bonds is about the last thing you feel inclined to do just now. After all, bonds are supposed to provide protection from stock market falls, and this year they have singularly failed to do that. As a result,...
Eight key takeaways from 20 years of SPIVA data
20 years ago, a team of researchers at S&P Dow Jones Indices decided they would provide an ongoing scorecard to show how many active fund managers beat their benchmarks. They called the scorecard SPIVA, or S&P Versus Active. Initially, SPIVA looked...
Put options: Do they actually achieve anything?
Put options are financial derivatives that give buyers the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell an asset at a specified price and on a specified date. They’re commonly used to protect against a heavy fall in the price...
Is the growth of passive investing messing with the markets?
The growth of passive investing has been one of the biggest, indeed arguably the single biggest, development in the asset management industry in recent years. But some observers have expressed concern that indexing has now grown too big and that it’s...
Active money management is like a love song
Romance and active money management are rarely mentioned in the same breath. But neuroscientists have shown that they’re far more closely connected than you might have thought, as ROBIN POWELL explains. As part of my job as a freelance money...
