Continuation of portfolio management highlights from Howard Marks’ book, The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor, Chapter 5 “The Most Important Thing Is…Understanding Risk” This is the first of three chapters to which Howard Marks dedicates to the topic of Risk. For those interested in Marks’ thoughts on risk, these chapters are […]
In this piece, Ted Lucas of Lattice Strategies discusses the relationship between correlation and diversification, as well as the intricate task of building investment portfolios that remain resilient during market drawdowns, yet retain upside participation during bull markets. To explore some of his other writings, they are all archived on Lattice Strategies’ website. Risk, Capital Preservation, […]
Ted Lucas of Lattice Strategies produces many worthwhile reads (conveniently, they’re all archived on Lattice’s website). The man is so well-read I wonder when he finds time to sleep. In this article, he references Antti Ilmanen’s new book Expected Returns, producing a wonderfully succinct piece highlighting the dangers of “conventional price history-based risk measures,” such […]
Continuation of content extracted from an interview with Steve Romick of First Pacific Advisors (Newsletter Fall 2010) published by Columbia Business School. Please see Part 1 for more details on this series. Capital Preservation, Conservatism “Most of our financial exposure is on the debt side. We were able to buy loans with very strong collateral, […]
Here is the first installment of a series on portfolio management and Seth Klarman, with ideas extracted from old Baupost Group letters. Our Readers know that we generally provide excerpts along with commentary for each topic. However, at the request of Baupost, we will not be providing any excerpts for this series. When To […]
Here is Part 2 of our summary (focused on portfolio management tid bits, of course) of an interview with David E. Shaw in Peter J. Tanous’ book Investment Gurus. For additional background and context, please see Part 1. Risk, Hedging “The purpose of a portfolio optimizer is to trade off risk and return in […]
Below is a continuation of portfolio management highlights from Howard Marks’ recent book, The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor, Chapter 2 “Understanding Market Efficiency (and It’s Limitation)”: Risk “I have my own reservations about the theory [efficient market hypothesis], and the biggest one has to do with the way it links […]
This post is a continuation in a series on portfolio management and the Buffett Partnership Letters. Please refer to the initial post in this series for more details. During 1961, Buffett started to write semi-annual letters because his clients told him the annual letter was “a long time between drinks.” The summary below is derived […]
Many thanks to Adam Bain of CommonWealth Opportunity Capital for tipping PM Jar about this chapter in Steve Drobny’s Invisible Hands. “The Pensioner” interviewed “runs a major portfolio for one of the largest pension funds in the world.” He seems to define risk (for the most part) as volatility. Regardless of whether you agree with […]
Here is Part 2 of tidbits from a conversation between Seth Klarman and Jason Zweig. Part 1 and the actual text of the interview is available here. Time Management “…sourcing of opportunity…a major part of what we do – identifying where we are likely to find bargains. Time is scarce. We can’t look at everything.” […]
Here is Part 3 on the wonderfully insightful interview in Steve Drobny’s book The Invisible Hands with Jim Leitner, who runs Falcon Investment Management, and was previously a member of Yale Endowment’s Investment Committee. Leitner is an investor who has spent considerable time contemplating the science and art of investing, making money opportunistically across all asset classes, unconstrained, […]
This post is a continuation in a series on portfolio management and the Buffett Partnership Letters. Please refer to the initial post in this series for more details. Selectivity, Hurdle Rate, Risk “The higher level of the market, the fewer the undervalued securities and I am finding some difficulty in securing an adequate number of attractive investments. I […]
Tail risk hedging (and hedging in general) has been a hot topic of discussion in recent years. With the market rally and the VIX back down to historically low levels (~15 as of this writing), I thought it appropriate to share a paper published by AQR Capital Management in the Summer 2011 (AQR Tail Risk […]
PIMCO’s power brains often generate really interesting and unique analysis to common questions. The summary and thoughts below were derived from a recent presentation on asset allocation. Discount Rate Post US downgrade, and recent sovereign debt crisis, what are the implications for the actual figure of the risk-free rate? What about the equity risk premium? […]
Michael F. Price is going to kick off our inagural post. Well, sort of. I’d like to share the summary (mainly the categorized juicy portfolio management bits) of an interview with MFP in Peter J. Tanous’ book Investment Gurus. Sourcing, Creativity: Price discusses how competitive the traditional bankruptcy and restructuring game has become (this was 1997 […]