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We believe in active portfolio management but not aggressive portfolio management.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
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Nature is great at hedging investments. Nature doesn’t hedge by betting for and against the same things. Nature hedges by cultivating resilience.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
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The wise study the numbers and their ways. The wise count their movements and their stays.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (The Wealth Reference Guide: An American Classic)
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A portfolio that exists in service to God is a portfolio blessed by God.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
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I try to be a good investment to God. All the good things he’s given me, I aim to multiply and return to him and his purposes a maximum ROI. I’m just a tree in his fruit garden aiming to produce good fruit.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
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Portfolio resilience protects assets from loss.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
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Half of all U.S. mutual fund portfolio managers do not invest a cent of their own money in their funds, according to Morningstar.69 This might seem atrocious, and surely the statistic uncovers some hypocrisy.
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Morgan Housel (The Psychology of Money)
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senior managers’ goal here should be to manage their portfolio of businesses to wisely balance between profitable growth and cash flow at a given point in time.
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W. Chan Kim (Blue Ocean Strategy: How To Create Uncontested Market Space And Make The Competition Irrelevant)
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Investment Portfolios should be actively managed.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
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And of course Brian was far more upset about separation from those two blond moppets than about leaving Louise. There shouldn't be any problem loving both, but for some reason certain men choose; like good mutual-fund managers minimizing risk while maximizing portfolio yield, they take everything they once invested in their wives and sink it into their children instead. What is it? Do they seem safer, because they need you? Because you can never become their ex-father, as I think I might become your ex-wife?
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Lionel Shriver (We Need to Talk About Kevin)
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But the simple truth is this: the more complex an investment is, the less likely it is to be profitable. Index funds outperform actively managed funds in large part simply because actively managed funds require expensive active managers. Not only are they prone to making investing mistakes, their fees are a continual performance drag on the portfolio.
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J.L. Collins (The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life)
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At Mayflower-Plymouth, we view a portfolio as an ecosystem.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
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One way to improve efficiency is to streamline processes according to schedules, required inputs and expected outputs.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
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To acquire an asset at greater cost than value is simply unwise.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (Investing, The Permaculture Way: Mayflower-Plymouth's 12 Principles of Permaculture Investing)
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In nature, capital is never stagnant. Capital exists in service to life - at all times.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (Investing, The Permaculture Way: Mayflower-Plymouth's 12 Principles of Permaculture Investing)
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Everyone knows about market risk and management risk. But there are a variety of non obvious risks to consider when managing a portfolio of investments. They include political risk, share premiums and discounts risk, Interest Rate risk, Income Risk, Tax law changes risk, valuation risk, and liquidity risk, among others. This is why professional active portfolio management is the way to go.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
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If you are inexperienced, start with a fraction of your money. Don’t play with money that is not yours.
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Naved Abdali
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Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing.
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Warren Buffett
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Nature was a quant way before all of these MBAs and Economists were quants. I respect MBAs, and I respect economists. I just happen to respect nature more.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
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Jesus taught us to be good stewards of capital.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (4 Business Lessons From Jesus: A businessmans interpretation of Jesus' teachings, applied in a business context.)
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Nature ensures efficiency through self-sustaining systems. Businesses should do the same.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
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We believe that the capital in our portfolio should be a platform for utility and a facilitator of life.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (Investing, The Permaculture Way: Mayflower-Plymouth's 12 Principles of Permaculture Investing)
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We believe that active management and passive management are not necessarily contradictory ideas.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (Investing, The Permaculture Way: Mayflower-Plymouth's 12 Principles of Permaculture Investing)
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We believe that capital must be cared for – stewarded.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (Investing, The Permaculture Way: Mayflower-Plymouth's 12 Principles of Permaculture Investing)
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All stakeholders should benefit from the capital we allocate in our portfolio, on a net value add basis.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (Investing, The Permaculture Way: Mayflower-Plymouth's 12 Principles of Permaculture Investing)
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Being net value adders puts us better positioned for long-term growth and longevity – because in the long term, capital flows to net value adders.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (Investing, The Permaculture Way: Mayflower-Plymouth's 12 Principles of Permaculture Investing)
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If I could manage a portfolio like he manages a kiss, I’d be a millionaire.
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Karen Grey (What I'm Looking For (Boston Classics, #1))
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Managing a portfolio is like managing a garden. You don’t just want different kinds of plants in your garden. You want those different plants to have synergy and to work together harmoniously to maximize productivity. In the same way, when different elements in the portfolio have synergy and work together to help each other maximize individual productivity, their collective yields can then be reinvested to maximize the productivity of the whole portfolio. There’s a compounding effect and a multiplicative value effect that takes place with the permaculture investing approach.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
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Since business is an exchange of value, with the greatest profits afforded to the businesses that add the most value most additionally – being a net value adder positions us to achieve the greatest ROI.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (Investing, The Permaculture Way: Mayflower-Plymouth's 12 Principles of Permaculture Investing)
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At Mayflower-Plymouth, we analyze global markets, analyze businesses and employ a range of strategies that emulate natural ecosystems to deliver holistic and industry-consistent investment returns. Our approach emphasizes preservation, steady compounding growth and steady returns for our capital partners and clients.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
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Our Principles of Permaculture Capital Stewardship set us apart from other Asset Management firms. These principles allow us to model nature in the way we steward Capital to ensure portfolio resilience, steady ROI and profit.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
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It is imperative to acquire assets at a financial cost that is less than their value. Timing the purchase based on changes in the marketplace or other factors may present great opportunity to widen the margin between cost and value.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (Investing, The Permaculture Way: Mayflower-Plymouth's 12 Principles of Permaculture Investing)
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In the mutual fund industry, for example, the annual rate of portfolio turnover for the average actively managed equity fund runs to almost 100 percent, ranging from a hardly minimal 25 percent for the lowest turnover quintile to an astonishing 230 percent for the highest quintile. (The turnover of all-stock-market index funds is about 7 percent.)
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John C. Bogle (The Clash of the Cultures: Investment vs. Speculation)
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Business will forever be a platform for people to exchange value. People are largely unpredictable, and value is largely subjective. This is the space where humans will always outperform AI – the space where active management will always be necessary.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (Investing, The Permaculture Way: Mayflower-Plymouth's 12 Principles of Permaculture Investing)
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The fee asset managers charge is for the value they provide. If a farmer grows a fruiting tree, you pay him more for the tree than you would pay him for just a seedling. Why? Because of the effort, energy and skill the farmer put into growing that tree plus the added value of the income (fruit) that tree provides are a testament to the farmers value add and he deserves to be compensated for that value add. It’s the same kind of thing with the 2 & 20 you pay the portfolio manager.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
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It is a common misconception that if you diversify, you don’t need to learn anything. Just buy a bunch of stocks, and you will be good. Nothing can be further from the truth.
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Naved Abdali
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No amount of diversification can replace investment research. If you want to invest, you have to learn.
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Naved Abdali
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it is not a calculated risk if you haven’t calculated it.
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Naved Abdali
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It may take some time, but capital will eventually flow to the most logical place.
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Naved Abdali
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The stock market, as a whole, has and will recover from every downturn.
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Naved Abdali
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When you buy a stock, you buy a piece of business, not a quote from a broker. As long as the company is doing good, your investment is safe.
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Naved Abdali
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There is an excellent characteristic of stock investment that it can only go to zero.
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Naved Abdali
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You must start investing as early as possible. Yesterday was better than today, and
today is better than tomorrow. Don’t wait for a significant market drop.
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Naved Abdali
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Money managers tend to make irrational decisions just to protect their calendar year performances, even if they believe that decision is not in the best interest of investors.
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Naved Abdali
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Annual performance means nothing to individual investors.
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Naved Abdali
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Leveraging is not evil but must be used with extreme caution and care. You must understand that over-leveraging is the prime reason for all market blowups.
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Naved Abdali
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Proper diversification can be achieved with a handful of assets. On the other hand, a poorly selected portfolio with hundreds of stocks and bonds can be inadequate for diversification purposes.
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Naved Abdali
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All of life is Capital stewarded by God. And he allows us to steward some of it according to his purposes. And the more we model him in our stewardship, the more he seems to allow us to steward.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
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Establishing and maintaining an unconventional investment profile requires acceptance of uncomfortably idiosyncratic portfolios, which frequently appear downright imprudent in the eyes of conventional wisdom. Unless institutions maintain contrarian positions through difficult times, the resulting damage of buying high and selling low imposes severe financial and reputational costs on the institution.
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David F. Swensen (Pioneering Portfolio Management: An Unconventional Approach to Institutional Investment, Fully Revised and Updated)
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The index fund is a most unlikely hero for the typical investor. It is no more (nor less) than a broadly diversified portfolio, typically run at rock-bottom costs, without the putative benefit of a brilliant, resourceful, and highly skilled portfolio manager. The index fund simply buys and holds the securities in a particular index, in proportion to their weight in the index. The concept is simplicity writ large.
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John C. Bogle (Common Sense on Mutual Funds, Updated 10th Anniversary Edition)
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Kovner lists risk management as the key to successful trading; he always decides on an exit point before he puts on a trade. He also stresses the need for evaluating risk on a portfolio basis rather than viewing the risk of each trade independently. This is absolutely critical when one holds positions that are highly correlated, since the overall portfolio risk is likely to be much greater than the trader realizes.
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Jack D. Schwager (Market Wizards: Interviews with Top Traders)
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Diversification, the easy accessibility of funds, and having a skilled professional money manager working to make your investment grow are the three most prominent reasons that mutual funds have become so popular.
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Michele Cagan (Investing 101: From Stocks and Bonds to ETFs and IPOs, an Essential Primer on Building a Profitable Portfolio (Adams 101 Series))
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This tendency of overconfidence and poor outcomes is not confined to only retail investors. Institutional investors suffer from overconfidence equally if not more, and their investment results are not superior either.
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Naved Abdali
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Every all-time high of the stock market proves that the market has eventually recovered from all downturns, 100% of the time. This strategy is the only one that worked every time without a single failure for centuries.
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Naved Abdali
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Product people are business people, first and foremost. They work across functions and serve to integrate or synchronize the work of others so that products and portfolios can be planned, developed, launched, and managed.
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Steven Haines (The Product Manager's Survival Guide)
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One reason nature is efficient is because there is no waste. Everything produced creates value for others and is consumed by others on the basis of value. What one life may discard as not valuable is consumed by another life because of its valuable. And all things produced and consumed are continually upcycled, becoming more valuable each cycle. Perhaps it’s because nature has a capital-centric view of things; everything in nature is capital and produces capital which to varying degrees provides value to all other things in nature. Imagine if economies worked like this. Imagine if investment portfolios worked like this. Imagine if businesses worked like this. What a beautiful world it would be.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
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Don't mention that you also happen to manage a six-figure portfolio to your "voluntary simplicity" friends and don't mention that you only have one bedroom to your investment friends unless you're prepared for the resulting discussion.
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Jacob Lund Fisker (Early Retirement Extreme: A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence)
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The problem with fiat is that simply maintaining the wealth you already own requires significant active management and expert decision-making. You need to develop expertise in portfolio allocation, risk management, stock and bond valuation, real estate markets, credit markets, global macro trends, national and international monetary policy, commodity markets, geopolitics, and many other arcane and highly specialized fields in order to make informed investment decisions that allow you to maintain the wealth you already earned. You effectively need to earn your money twice with fiat, once when you work for it, and once when you invest it to beat inflation. The simple gold coin saved you from all of this before fiat.
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Saifedean Ammous (The Fiat Standard: The Debt Slavery Alternative to Human Civilization)
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Market participants willing to accept illiquidity achieve a significant edge in seeking high risk-adjusted returns. Because market players routinely overpay for liquidity, serious investors benefit by avoiding overpriced liquid securities and by embracing less liquid alternatives.
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David F. Swensen (Pioneering Portfolio Management: An Unconventional Approach to Institutional Investment, Fully Revised and Updated)
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I believe when using leverage, the following four conditions must be met. 1. Leverage must be in the general direction of a secular trend. 2. Leverage should never expire. 3. Leveraged positions should not be subject to forced sell. 4. The maximum possible loss should not be more than the invested capital.
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Naved Abdali
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Organizations that manage IT delivery as projects instead of products are using managerial principles from two ages ago and cannot expect those approaches to be adequate for succeeding in this one. Visionary organizations are creating and managing their Value Stream Networks and product portfolios in order to leapfrog their competition in the Age of Software
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Mik Kersten (Project to Product: How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of Digital Disruption with the Flow Framework)
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To be sure, the cost of managing capital and of “formal” financial intermediation (that is, the investment advice and portfolio management services provided by a bank or official financial institution or real estate agency or managing partner) is obviously taken into account and deducted from the income on capital in calculating the average rate of return (as presented here). But this is not the case with “informal” financial intermediation: every investor spends time—in some cases a lot of time—managing his own portfolio and affairs and determining which investments are likely to be the most profitable. This effort can in certain cases be compared to genuine entrepreneurial labor or to a form of business activity.
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Thomas Piketty (Capital in the Twenty-First Century)
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Social validation, sometimes referred to as herding, is a powerful, hardwired behavior. It is observed in nearly all species, including geese, deer, fish, and insects. Herding is frequently critical for survival, so to go contrary to it is incredibly difficult. The lesson of our past is that sticking out from the crowd by doing something different is dangerous.
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C. Thomas Howard (Behavioral Portfolio Management: How successful investors master their emotions and build superior portfolios)
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most important distinction in the investment world does not separate individuals and institutions; the most important distinction divides those investors with the ability to make high quality active management decisions from those investors without active management expertise. Few institutions and even fewer individuals exhibit the ability and commit the resources to produce risk-adjusted excess returns.
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David F. Swensen (Pioneering Portfolio Management: An Unconventional Approach to Institutional Investment, Fully Revised and Updated)
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Any so-called 'radical' strategy that seeks to empower the disempowered in the realm of social reproduction by opening up that realm to monetisation and market forces is headed in exactly the wrong direction. Providing financial literacy classes for the populace at large will simply expose that population predatory practices as they seek to manage their own investment portfolios like minnows swimming in a sea of sharks. Providing microcredit and microfinance facilities encourages people to participate in the market economy but does so in such a way as to maximise the energy they have to expend while minimising their returns. Providing legal title for land property ownership in the hope that this will bring economic and social stability to the lives of the marginalised will almost certainly lead in the long run to their dispossession and eviction from that space and place they already hold through customary use rights.
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David Harvey (Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism)
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Jesus does not say blandly that treasure in heaven results from our generosity on earth. More passionately, he urges his followers to pursue treasure in heaven, the way a thirsty desert wanderer pursues water, or a savvy portfolio manager scours the financial landscape for investments. John comes nowhere close to the Biblical conclusion. Not through faulty reasoning, but the Objectivist simply starts from a different premise. That premise leads him to the “primacy of the individual.
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Mark David Henderson (The Soul of Atlas: Ayn Rand, Christianity, a Quest for Common Ground)
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In forests – Seeds are planted in the soil (capital) and become trees that shed leaves as they grow. Those shedded leaves become added capital to the soil (dividends/yields). The tree also provides a home for other life forms which return capital to the soil. Upon the death of the tree, it’s entire body becomes capital as it is returned to the soil. In this cycle, every tree is an investment which results in the long term accumulation of soil (capital) over time. As the soil grows, it becomes better able to invest in future trees and host future forests. And the yield of them all collectively becomes greater and greater as the capital accumulates. In fact, everything in a natural ecosystem both is capital and exists in service to capital. This duality of capital in natural ecosystems is why capital in natural ecosystems is able to compound and multiply so well. So when it comes to investing - managing portfolios, we apply this duality of capital perspective and pair it with our stewardship identity, which allows us to grow portfolios and maximize wealth.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (Investing, The Permaculture Way: Mayflower-Plymouth's 12 Principles of Permaculture Investing)
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This is the same problem that established companies experience. Their past successes were built on a finely tuned engine of growth. If that engine runs its course and growth slows or stops, there can be a crisis if the company does not have new startups incubating within its ranks that can provide new sources of growth. Companies of any size can suffer from this perpetual affliction. They need to manage a portfolio of activities, simultaneously tuning their engine of growth and developing new sources of growth for when that engine inevitably runs its course.
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Eric Ries (The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses)
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If you are going to use probability to model a financial market, then you had better use the right kind of probability. Real markets are wild. Their price fluctuations can be hair-raising-far greater and more damaging than the mild variations of orthodox finance. That means that individual stocks and currencies are riskier than normally assumed. It means that stock portfolios are being put together incorrectly; far from managing risk, they may be magnifying it. It means that some trading strategies are misguided, and options mis-priced. Anywhere the bell-curve assumption enters the financial calculations, an error can come out.
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Benoît B. Mandelbrot (The (Mis)Behavior of Markets)
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In March 1997, Jules and Dennis went to dinner at Ash and Ethan's house along with Duncan and Shyla, the portfolio manager and the literary advocate. The prick and the cunt, Jules had once called them. Jules and Dennis had never understood why Ash and Ethan liked this couple so much, but they'd all been thrown together so many times over the years, for casual evenings and more formal celebrations, that it was too late to ask. Duncan and Shyla must have felt equally puzzled at Ash and Ethan's fidelity to their old friends the social worker and the depressive. No one said a word against anyone; everyone went to the dinners to which they were invited. Both couples knew they satisfied a different part of Ash and Ethan, but when they all came together in one place, the group made no sense.
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Meg Wolitzer (The Interestings)
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Leaders nourish and uphold the culture of an organization. They make choices that inevitably limit the size and scope of activities that the organization undertakes. A good leader will only work in a firm where there is clear and effective governance to protect the culture, philosophy and investment discipline of the firm. The most effective leaders create a non-hierarchical environment in which idea sharing is encouraged, and diligent execution is rewarded. They also establish a solid foundation, a durable framework, and processes for successfully managing an organization that can maintain these qualities. And last, a great investment leader has a zero tolerance policy for breaches of integrity. By integrity, we mean not only honesty and fulfillment of fiduciary obligation, but process integrity.
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Brian Singer (Investment Leadership and Portfolio Management: The Path to Successful Stewardship for Investment Firms (Wiley Finance Book 502))
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The final principle is that, more often than not, originality lies on the far side of unoriginality. The Finnish American photographer Arno Minkkinen dramatizes this deep truth about the power of patience with a parable about Helsinki’s main bus station. There are two dozen platforms there, he explains, with several different bus lines departing from each one—and for the first part of its journey, each bus leaving from any given platform takes the same route through the city as all the others, making identical stops. Think of each stop as representing one year of your career, Minkkinen advises photography students. You pick an artistic direction—perhaps you start working on platinum studies of nudes—and you begin to accumulate a portfolio of work. Three years (or bus stops) later, you proudly present it to the owner of a gallery. But you’re dismayed to be told that your pictures aren’t as original as you thought, because they look like knockoffs of the work of the photographer Irving Penn; Penn’s bus, it turns out, had been on the same route as yours. Annoyed at yourself for having wasted three years following somebody else’s path, you jump off that bus, hail a taxi, and return to where you started at the bus station. This time, you board a different bus, choosing a different genre of photography in which to specialize. But a few stops later, the same thing happens: you’re informed that your new body of work seems derivative, too. Back you go to the bus station. But the pattern keeps on repeating: nothing you produce ever gets recognized as being truly your own. What’s the solution? “It’s simple,” Minkkinen says. “Stay on the bus. Stay on the fucking bus.” A little farther out on their journeys through the city, Helsinki’s bus routes diverge, plunging off to unique destinations as they head through the suburbs and into the countryside beyond. That’s where the distinctive work begins. But it begins at all only for those who can muster the patience to immerse themselves in the earlier stage—the trial-and-error phase of copying others, learning new skills, and accumulating experience.
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Oliver Burkeman (Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals)
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When applying agile practices at the portfolio level, similar benefits accrue: • Demonstrable results—Every quarter or so products, or at least deployable pieces of products, are developed, implemented, tested, and accepted. Short projects deliver chunks of functionality incrementally. • Customer feedback—Each quarter product managers review results and provide feedback, and executives can view progress in terms of working products. • Better portfolio planning—Portfolio planning is more realistic because it is based on deployed whole or partial products. • Flexibility—Portfolios can be steered toward changing business goals and higher-value projects because changes are easy to incorporate at the end of each quarter. Because projects produce working products, partial value is captured rather than being lost completely as usually happens with serial projects that are terminated early. • Productivity—There is a hidden productivity improvement with agile methods from the work not done. Through constant negotiation, small projects are both eliminated and pared down.
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Jim Highsmith (Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products (Agile Software Development Series))
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On Diversification for Stress Management The below came from me asking, “What advice would you give your 30-year-old self?”: “My 30-year-old self wouldn’t have access to medical marijuana, so I’d have a limited canvas with which to paint. I’ve always made it a top priority since I was a teenager—and had tons of stress-related medical problems—to make that job one: to learn how to not have stress. I would consider myself a world champion at avoiding stress at this point in dozens of different ways. A lot of it is just how you look at the world, but most of it is really the process of diversification. I’m not going to worry about losing one friend if I have a hundred, but if I have two friends I’m really going to be worried. I’m not going to worry about losing my job because my one boss is going to fire me, because I have thousands of bosses at newspapers everywhere. One of the ways to not worry about stress is to eliminate it. I don’t worry about my stock picks because I have a diversified portfolio. Diversification works in almost every area of your life to reduce your stress.
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Timothy Ferriss (Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers)
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Where to stash your organizational risk? Lately, I’m increasingly hearing folks reference the idea of organizational debt. This is the organizational sibling of technical debt, and it represents things like biased interview processes and inequitable compensation mechanisms. These are systemic problems that are preventing your organization from reaching its potential. Like technical debt, these risks linger because they are never the most pressing problem. Until that one fateful moment when they are. Within organizational debt, there is a volatile subset most likely to come abruptly due, and I call that subset organizational risk. Some good examples might be a toxic team culture, a toilsome fire drill, or a struggling leader. These problems bubble up from your peers, skip-level one-on-ones,16 and organizational health surveys. If you care and are listening, these are hard to miss. But they are slow to fix. And, oh, do they accumulate! The larger and older your organization is, the more you’ll find perched on your capable shoulders. How you respond to this is, in my opinion, the core challenge of leading a large organization. How do you continue to remain emotionally engaged with the challenges faced by individuals you’re responsible to help, when their problem is low in your problems queue? In that moment, do you shrug off the responsibility, either by changing roles or picking powerlessness? Hide in indifference? Become so hard on yourself that you collapse inward? I’ve tried all of these! They weren’t very satisfying. What I’ve found most successful is to identify a few areas to improve, ensure you’re making progress on those, and give yourself permission to do the rest poorly. Work with your manager to write this up as an explicit plan and agree on what reasonable progress looks like. These issues are still stored with your other bags of risk and responsibility, but you’ve agreed on expectations. Now you have a set of organizational risks that you’re pretty confident will get fixed, and then you have all the others: known problems, likely to go sideways, that you don’t believe you’re able to address quickly. What do you do about those? I like to keep them close. Typically, my organizational philosophy is to stabilize team-by-team and organization-by-organization. Ensuring any given area is well on the path to health before moving my focus. I try not to push risks onto teams that are functioning well. You do need to delegate some risks, but generally I think it’s best to only delegate solvable risk. If something simply isn’t likely to go well, I think it’s best to hold the bag yourself. You may be the best suited to manage the risk, but you’re almost certainly the best positioned to take responsibility. As an organizational leader, you’ll always have a portfolio of risk, and you’ll always be doing very badly at some things that are important to you. That’s not only okay, it’s unavoidable.
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Will Larson (An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management)
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Here are some of the handicaps mutual-fund managers and other professional investors are saddled with: With billions of dollars under management, they must gravitate toward the biggest stocks—the only ones they can buy in the multimillion-dollar quantities they need to fill their portfolios. Thus many funds end up owning the same few overpriced giants. Investors tend to pour more money into funds as the market rises. The managers use that new cash to buy more of the stocks they already own, driving prices to even more dangerous heights. If fund investors ask for their money back when the market drops, the managers may need to sell stocks to cash them out. Just as the funds are forced to buy stocks at inflated prices in a rising market, they become forced sellers as stocks get cheap again. Many portfolio managers get bonuses for beating the market, so they obsessively measure their returns against benchmarks like the S & P 500 index. If a company gets added to an index, hundreds of funds compulsively buy it. (If they don’t, and that stock then does well, the managers look foolish; on the other hand, if they buy it and it does poorly, no one will blame them.) Increasingly, fund managers are expected to specialize. Just as in medicine the general practitioner has given way to the pediatric allergist and the geriatric otolaryngologist, fund managers must buy only “small growth” stocks, or only “mid-sized value” stocks, or nothing but “large blend” stocks.6 If a company gets too big, or too small, or too cheap, or an itty bit too expensive, the fund has to sell it—even if the manager loves the stock. So
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Benjamin Graham (The Intelligent Investor)
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One executive team I worked with had at one time identified three criteria for deciding what projects to take on. But over time they had become more and more indiscriminate, and eventually the company’s portfolio of projects seemed to share only the criterion that a customer had asked them to do it. As a result, the morale on the team had plummeted, and not simply because team members were overworked and overwhelmed from having taken on too much. It was also because no project ever seemed to justify itself, and there was no greater sense of purpose. Worse, it now became difficult to distinguish themselves in the marketplace because their work, which had previously occupied a unique and profitable niche, had become so general. Only by going through the work of identifying extreme criteria were they able to get rid of the 70 and 80 percents that were draining their time and resources and start focusing on the most interesting work that best distinguished them in the marketplace. Furthermore, this system empowered employees to choose the projects on which they could make their highest contribution; where they had once been at the mercy of what felt like capricious management decisions, they now had a voice. On one occasion I saw the quietest and most junior member of the team push back on the most senior executive. She simply said, “Should we be taking on this account, given the criteria we have?” This had never happened until the criteria were made both selective and explicit. Making our criteria both selective and explicit affords us a systematic tool for discerning what is essential and filtering out the things that are not.
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Greg McKeown (Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less)
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7. Add Net Value to all Stakeholders: Invest in ways that benefit not only yourself but also the broader community, environment, and all parties involved.
8. Provide Authentic Data: Be transparent and honest in your financial reporting, providing accurate information to all stakeholders.
9. Collect & Utilize Authentic Data: Base your investment decisions on reliable, verified data rather than speculation or rumors.
10. Diversify Holistically: Diversify your investments across different asset classes, industries, and geographical regions to reduce risk and maximize potential returns.
11. Harvest Yields Equitably: Distribute profits fairly among all stakeholders, ensuring everyone benefits from the investment's success.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
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do you think Jesus would do if he came back to earth tonight in Bremerton?” C asked, as he spooned some rice onto his plate. “I don’t know,” I said, savoring a mouthful of Mongolian beef. “Would he come in a white robe and sandals, or the dress of this time?” C pressed on. I shrugged my shoulders, forking in the fried rice. “Would he be white, black, Asian, or maybe look like Saddam Hussein instead of Kevin Costner or Tom Cruise? What if he didn’t fit our image of him? What if he was bald? Or, for God’s sake, what if he was gay? “He wouldn’t have any cash, no MasterCard, Visa, Discover Card, or portfolio of any kind. If he went to a bank and said, ‘Hello. I’m Jesus, the son of God. I need some of those green things that say “In God We Trust” on them to buy some food and get a place to stay,’ the bank manager would say, ‘I’m sorry, but I looked in my computer and without a social security number, local address, and credit history, I can’t do anything for you. Maybe if you show me a miracle or two, I might lend you fifty dollars.’ “Where would he stay? The state park charges sixteen dollars a night. Could he go to a church and ask, ‘May I stay here? I am Jesus’? Would they believe him?” As I took a sip of my drink, I wondered just who this character was sitting across from me. Was he some angel sent to save me? Or was he, as the Rolling Stones warned in their song, Satan himself here to claim me for some sin of this life or a past life of which I had no recollection? Or was he an alien? Or was he Jesus, the Christ himself, just “messing” with me? Was I in the presence of a prophet, or just some hopped-up druggie? “‘Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.’ That’s what Jesus said. What doors would be opened to him?” he asked. “The Salvation Army—Sally’s?” I guessed. “That’s about all,” C said. “Unless he saw Tony Robbins’ TV formula to become a millionaire and started selling miracles to the rich at twenty-thousand dollars a pop. He could go on Regis, Oprah, maybe get an interview with Bill Moyers, or go on Nightline. Or joust with the nonbelievers on Jerry Springer! Think of the book deals! He
”
”
Richard LeMieux (Breakfast at Sally's)
“
Was this luck, or was it more than that? Proving skill is difficult in venture investing because, as we have seen, it hinges on subjective judgment calls rather than objective or quantifiable metrics. If a distressed-debt hedge fund hires analysts and lawyers to scrutinize a bankrupt firm, it can learn precisely which bond is backed by which piece of collateral, and it can foresee how the bankruptcy judge is likely to rule; its profits are not lucky. Likewise, if an algorithmic hedge fund hires astrophysicists to look for patterns in markets, it may discover statistical signals that are reliably profitable. But when Perkins backed Tandem and Genentech, or when Valentine backed Atari, they could not muster the same certainty. They were investing in human founders with human combinations of brilliance and weakness. They were dealing with products and manufacturing processes that were untested and complex; they faced competitors whose behaviors could not be forecast; they were investing over long horizons. In consequence, quantifiable risks were multiplied by unquantifiable uncertainties; there were known unknowns and unknown unknowns; the bracing unpredictability of life could not be masked by neat financial models. Of course, in this environment, luck played its part. Kleiner Perkins lost money on six of the fourteen investments in its first fund. Its methods were not as fail-safe as Tandem’s computers. But Perkins and Valentine were not merely lucky. Just as Arthur Rock embraced methods and attitudes that put him ahead of ARD and the Small Business Investment Companies in the 1960s, so the leading figures of the 1970s had an edge over their competitors. Perkins and Valentine had been managers at leading Valley companies; they knew how to be hands-on; and their contributions to the success of their portfolio companies were obvious. It was Perkins who brought in the early consultants to eliminate the white-hot risks at Tandem, and Perkins who pressed Swanson to contract Genentech’s research out to existing laboratories. Similarly, it was Valentine who drove Atari to focus on Home Pong and to ally itself with Sears, and Valentine who arranged for Warner Communications to buy the company. Early risk elimination plus stage-by-stage financing worked wonders for all three companies. Skeptical observers have sometimes asked whether venture capitalists create innovation or whether they merely show up for it. In the case of Don Valentine and Tom Perkins, there was not much passive showing up. By force of character and intellect, they stamped their will on their portfolio companies.
”
”
Sebastian Mallaby (The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future)
“
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First, he said, we need 30% in stocks (for instance, the S&P 500 or other indexes for further diversification in this basket). Initially that sounded low to me, but remember, stocks are three times more risky than bonds. And who am I to second-guess the Yoda of asset allocation!? “Then you need long-term government bonds. Fifteen percent in intermediate term [seven- to ten-year Treasuries] and forty percent in long-term bonds [20- to 25-year Treasuries].” “Why such a large percentage?” I asked. “Because this counters the volatility of the stocks.” I remembered quickly it’s about balancing risk, not the dollar amounts. And by going out to longer-term (duration) bonds, this allocation will bring a potential for higher returns. He rounded out the portfolio with 7.5% in gold and 7.5% in commodities. “You need to have a piece of that portfolio that will do well with accelerated inflation, so you would want a percentage in gold and commodities. These have high volatility. Because there are environments where rapid inflation can hurt both stocks and bonds.” Lastly, the portfolio must be rebalanced. Meaning, when one segment does well, you must sell a portion and reallocate back to the original allocation. This should be done at least annually, and, if done properly, it can actually increase the tax efficiency. This is part of the reason why I recommend having a fiduciary implement and manage this crucial, ongoing process.
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Anthony Robbins (Money Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom)
“
Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment recommends that investors engage not-for-profit fund management companies to create broadly diversified, passively managed portfolios. Note that most mutual-fund assets rest under the control of for-profit management companies. Not-for-profits represent a contrarian alternative. Note that most individuals’ portfolios contain result-dominating allocations to domestic marketable securities. True diversification represents a contrarian alternative. Note that most mutual funds attempt to beat the market. Market-mimicking strategies represent a contrarian alternative.
”
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David F. Swensen (Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment)
“
Fortunately for investors, two substantial funds management organizations adhere to high fiduciary standards, adopted in the context of corporate cultures designed to serve investor interests. Vanguard and TIAA-CREF both operate on a not-for-profit basis, allowing the companies to make individual investor interests paramount in the funds management process. By emphasizing high-quality delivery of low-cost investment products, Vanguard and TIAA-CREF provide individual investors with valuable tools for the portfolio construction process. Ultimately, a passive index fund managed by a not-for-profit investment management organization represents the combination most likely to satisfy investor aspirations. Following Mies van der Rohe’s famous dictum—“less is more”—the rigid calculus of index-fund investing dominates the ornate complexity of active fund management. Pursuing investment with a firm devoted solely to satisfying investor interests unifies principal and agent, reducing the investment equation to its most basic form. Out of the enormous breadth and complexity of the mutual-fund world, the preferred solution for investors stands alone in stark simplicity.
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David F. Swensen (Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment)
“
Labor also dominates stories of elite income at the next rung down. Although only three hedge fund managers took home over $1 billion in 2017, more than twenty-five took home $100 million or more, and $10 million incomes are so common that they do not make the papers. Even only modestly elite finance workers now receive huge paydays. According to one survey, a portfolio manager at a midsized hedge fund makes on average $2.4 million, and average Wall Street bonuses exploded from roughly $14,000 in 1985 to more than $180,000 in 2017, a year in which the average total salary for New York City’s 175,000 securities industry workers reached over $420,000. These sums reflect the fact that a typical investment bank disburses roughly half of its revenues after interest paid to its professional workers (making it a better three decades to be an elite banker than to be an owner of bank stocks). Elite managers in the real economy also do well. CEO incomes—the wages paid to top managerial labor—regularly reach seven figures; indeed, the average 2017 income of the CEO of an S&P 500 company was nearly $14 million. In a typical recent year the total compensation paid to the five highest-paid employees of each S&P 1500 firm (7,500 workers overall) might amount to 10 percent of S&P 1500 firms’ collective profits. These workers do not own the assets—the portfolios or the companies—that they manage. Their incomes constitute wages paid for managerial labor rather than a return on invested capital. The enormous paydays reflect what prominent business analysts recently called a war between talent and capital—a war that talent is winning.
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Daniel Markovits (The Meritocracy Trap: How America's Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite)
“
But the flock of Silicon Valley unicorns had grown so large that Benioff himself had become nervous. The kind of rapid expansion that venture capital made possible wasn’t sustainable without discipline. In the middle of the decade, Benioff had issued a warning: “There’s going to be a lot of dead unicorns.” Neumann had begun pitching WeWork as a new breed of SaaS business: “space as a service.” The idea was that companies of all sizes would no longer handle their own real estate portfolios but would instead turn over the management of their physical space to WeWork, transforming the company into something like a real estate cloud—a “platform.” This was a goal shared by every ambitious start-up of the decade, no matter how specious the claim. Facebook, Uber, and Airbnb identified as platforms, as did Beyond Meat, the pea-protein burger maker (“plant-based-product platforms”); Peloton, the indoor exercise bike company (“the largest interactive fitness platform in the world”); and Casper, the mattress company (a “platform built for better sleep”). It was no longer good enough for companies to simply be what they were.
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Reeves Wiedeman (Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork)
“
Case #6 Sandy and Bob Bob is a successful dentist in his community. In the 15 years since he established his own practice, he has established a reliable base of patients and has built a thriving business in a great location. A couple years ago, he brought his wife, Sandy, a business expert with an MBA, on board to help him oversee the business end of the dental practice. She had recently left her job at a financial services firm, and Bob knew that Sandy’s business acumen would be helpful in getting his administrative house in order. She brought on new employees, developed effective new processes, and enhanced the office’s marketing efforts. Within a few months, Sandy’s improvements had managed to make the dental practice a well-oiled machine. Now she could turn her attention to their real estate portfolio. Bob and Sandy owned three small apartment buildings around town, as well as one small commercial center that was home to a nail salon, a chiropractor’s office, a coffee house and a wine shop. Fortunately, Bob’s dental practice was a success and their investments earned a nice passive income for them. Unfortunately, because Bob earned on average $250,000 per year, the couple couldn’t use passive loss, which in their case came to about $100,000, from their investments to offset his high earned income. Eventually, they would be earning sheltered profits—when the mortgages on their properties were paid off and the rentals made pure profit, or if they were to sell a property. When those things eventually happened, they could use their losses to shelter those profits. But until that time, the losses were going unused. Sandy made an appointment with their CPA to discuss the situation and see how they might improve their tax situation. The CPA asked, “What about becoming a real estate professional?” He explained to Sandy that if she spent 750 hours per year, or about 15 hours a week, on the couple’s real estate investments, she would be considered a real estate professional by the IRS. This would enable the couple to write off 100 percent of their passive losses against Bob’s high income, which would bring his taxable income down to $100,000. This $100,000 deduction brought Bob and Sandy into a lower tax bracket, saving them roughly $31,000 in taxes. Sandy already devoted a large percentage of her time to overseeing their investments, and when she saw the tax advantages, her decision became clear: She would file the Section 469(c)(7) and become a real estate professional.
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Garrett Sutton (Loopholes of Real Estate: Secrets of Successful Real Estate Investing (Rich Dad's Advisors (Paperback)))
“
Examples of real estate mutual funds include: • Fidelity Real Estate Investment Portfolio (FRESX), a managed fund (so expect a higher expense ratio) that selects REITs with high-quality properties (mainly commercial and industrial) • Cohen & Steers Realty Shares (CSRSX), a managed fund that holds a targeted portfolio of forty to sixty commercial REITs • Vanguard Real Estate Index Fund Admiral Shares (VGSLX), a low-cost index fund that tracks a key REIT benchmark index (called the MSCI US Investable Market Real Estate 25/50 Index) • Cohen & Steers Quality Income Realty Fund (RQI), a closed-end fund that holds a variety of high-income-producing commercial REITs and real estate–related stocks
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Michele Cagan (Real Estate Investing 101: From Finding Properties and Securing Mortgage Terms to REITs and Flipping Houses, an Essential Primer on How to Make Money with Real Estate (Adams 101 Series))
“
The history of stock price movements contains no useful information that will enable an investor consistently to outperform a buy-and-hold strategy in managing a portfolio.
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Burton G. Malkiel (A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing)
“
On December 7, 1999, Kevin Landis, portfolio manager of the Firsthand mutual funds, appeared on CNN’s Moneyline telecast. Asked if wireless telecommunication stocks were overvalued—with many trading at infinite multiples of their earnings—Landis had a ready answer. “It’s not a mania,” he shot back. “Look at the outright growth, the absolute value of the growth. It’s big.
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Benjamin Graham (The Intelligent Investor)
“
Many real estate investing clubs assign roles to members based on their personal background and abilities. Those responsibilities could include: • Keeping club records • Bookkeeping and taxes • Property maintenance • Tenant management • Member communications • Scheduling meetings • Representing the club at closings • Researching potential investments By keeping these jobs “in-house,” the club can direct more funds toward building its real estate portfolio or increasing equity.
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Michele Cagan (Real Estate Investing 101: From Finding Properties and Securing Mortgage Terms to REITs and Flipping Houses, an Essential Primer on How to Make Money with Real Estate (Adams 101 Series))
“
Pro-risk, aggressive investors, for example, should be expected to make more than the index in good times and lose more in bad times. This is where beta comes in. By the word beta, theory means relative volatility, or the relative responsiveness of the portfolio return to the market return. A portfolio with a beta above 1 is expected to be more volatile than the reference market, and a beta below 1 means it’ll be less volatile. Multiply the market return by the beta and you’ll get the return that a given portfolio should be expected to achieve, omitting nonsystematic sources of risk. If the market is up 15 percent, a portfolio with a beta of 1.2 should return 18 percent (plus or minus alpha). Theory looks at this information and says the increased return is explained by the increase in beta, or systematic risk. It also says returns don’t increase to compensate for risk other than systematic risk. Why don’t they? According to theory, the risk that markets compensate for is the risk that is intrinsic and inescapable in investing: systematic or “non-diversifiable” risk. The rest of risk comes from decisions to hold individual stocks: non-systematic risk. Since that risk can be eliminated by diversifying, why should investors be compensated with additional return for bearing it? According to theory, then, the formula for explaining portfolio performance (y) is as follows: y = α + βx Here α is the symbol for alpha, β stands for beta, and x is the return of the market. The market-related return of the portfolio is equal to its beta times the market return, and alpha (skill-related return) is added to arrive at the total return (of course, theory says there’s no such thing as alpha). Although I dismiss the identity between risk and volatility, I insist on considering a portfolio’s return in the light of its overall riskiness, as discussed earlier. A manager who earned 18 percent with a risky portfolio isn’t necessarily superior to one who earned 15 percent with a lower-risk portfolio. Risk-adjusted return holds the key, even though—since risk other than volatility can’t be quantified—I feel it is best assessed judgmentally, not calculated scientifically.
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Howard Marks (The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor (Columbia Business School Publishing))
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Of course, I also dismiss the idea that the alpha term in the equation has to be zero. Investment skill exists, even though not everyone has it. Only through thinking about risk-adjusted return might we determine whether an investor possesses superior insight, investment skill or alpha . . . that is, whether the investor adds value. The alpha/beta model is an excellent way to assess portfolios, portfolio managers, investment strategies and asset allocation schemes. It’s really an organized way to think about how much of the return comes from what the environment provides and how much from the manager’s value added. For example, it’s obvious that this manager doesn’t have any skill: Period Benchmark Return Portfolio Return 1 10 10 2 6 6 3 0 0 4 −10 −10 5 20 20 But neither does this manager (who moves just half as much as the benchmark): Period Benchmark Return Portfolio Return 1 10 5 2 6 3 3 0 0 4 −10 −5 5 20 10 Or this one (who moves twice as much): Period Benchmark Return Portfolio Return 1 10 20 2 6 12 3 0 0 4 −10 −20 5 20 40 This one has a little: Period Benchmark Return Portfolio Return 1 10 11 6 2 8 3 0 −1 4 −10 −9 5 20 21 While this one has a lot: Period Benchmark Return Portfolio Return 1 10 12 2 6 10 3 0 3 4 −10 2 5 20 30 This one has a ton, if you can live with the volatility: Period Benchmark Return Portfolio Return 1 10 25 2 6 20 3 0 −5 4 −10 −20 5 20 25 What’s clear from these tables is that “beating the market” and “superior investing” can be far from synonymous—see years one and two in the third example. It’s not just your return that matters, but also what risk you took to get it.
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Howard Marks (The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor (Columbia Business School Publishing))
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Trademark Law United States Huntsville
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Knowify Capital
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Green Projects Consulting
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Wait for the price to come to your desired level, and then buy it. If it goes down further, buy more.
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Naved Abdali