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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...
Is delegating voting powers on ESG to investors a cop-out?
Through the voting powers that come with large shareholdings, fund management companies have huge influence over the way that the companies they invest in are run. Increasingly, however, large asset managers like BlackRock are looking to delegate those voting powers to...
Three reasons why indexing works and continues to grow
Why index? Simply put, because indexing works. The alternative — active investing — may work, but the overwhelming probability is that it won’t and you would have been better off not taking the chance. A new paper, entitled Shooting the Messenger,...
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...
