Good reads from around the Web.
Perhaps it’s because it was the first film I saw at the cinema with my own money – and without my parents – but I often recall the life lessons taught by Crocodile Dundee, not least when I first encountered a bidet in Paris 20-odd years ago.
Alas, when I was mugged (with an axe!) in the late 1990s I was insufficiently armed to create this famous moment from the movie:
I thought again of this scene when I read Larry Swedroe [1] demolishing an argument in favour of active investing over at ETF.com [2].
After gently cutting the argument to shreds, Swedroe concludes:
The bottom line is that there’s no real cyclicality in the percentage of active managers who outperform, at least not when you measure things properly.
And there’s nothing presented in the article that should convince you that using actively managed funds is the winning strategy at any time.
Sorry, active fund management industry.
To mix my movie memes…
…you’re going to need a bigger boat.
From the blogs
Making good use of the things that we find…
Passive investing
- The joys of an all-in-one fund – Oblivious Investor [3]
- Passive investing more accessible than ever – Rick Ferri [4]
- Fundamental vs value-weighted index funds [Careful!] – I.F.G. [5]
Active investing
- Don’t listen to Fed Chair Yellen about stocks – Investing Caffeine [6]
- FTSE 5,000 or FTSE 10,000? – UK Value Investor [7]
- On a company’s ‘capacity to suffer’ – Clear Eyes Investing [8]
- Why value investing is so difficult [See graphs] – Euclidean [9]
- Deep dive into US ‘unicorns’ ($1 billion start-ups) [PDF] – KPMG [10]
Other articles
- People invest too much in stocks – Felix Salmon [11]
- Don’t blow yourself up – A Wealth of Common Sense [12]
- A good primer on investing [Slides] – Business Insider [13]
- Exploring global happiness levels – Keeper of the Cauldron [14]
- Valuing the UK house market by county and local salary – RIT [15]
- How much is your stuff worth? – Under the Money Tree [16]
Free brain training of the week: Blogger Ermine [17] spotted that the Open University has just started a free online course entitled Managing My Investments [18]. It runs for six weeks.
Mainstream media money
Some links are Google search results – in PC/desktop view these enable you to click through to read the piece without being a subscriber of that site.1 [19]
Passive investing
- Want diversification? Buy bonds – Morningstar [20]
- Smarter fund managers are still not worth paying for – Telegraph [21]
- New research gives Smart Beta the thumbs down – MarketWatch [22]
- Big ETF firms bolster credit lines over liquidity fears – Reuters [23]
- Big interview with Vanguard’s CEO Bill McNabb [Audio] – Bloomberg [24]
Active investing
- Barings’ model tips UK and Japanese equities – Telegraph [25]
- Which asset bubble will burst first? – Interactive Investor [26]
Other stuff worth reading
- Do a State pension top-up instead of saving cash – Telegraph [27]
- Household wealth rises by record £50k in 2014 – ThisIsMoney [28]
- Young Britons needs their own Ros Altmann – Guardian [29]
- ‘Triple tax lock’ makes CGT a target [Search result] – FT [30]
- UK investing fraudsters up game, make billions [Video] – Bloomberg [31]
- Deep dive into the 4% withdrawal rule [Note: US data] – NY Times [32]
- Algorithmic trading and comedy don’t mix – Bloomberg [33]
- From $95,000 a year to selling ice cream in paradise – Sunny Skyz [34]
- The revolution will be wearable – Washington Post [35]
- The global land grab for farmland – Vox [36]
Book of the week: I read an interesting article [37] this week on innovation and the rise of medieval knights, which riffed heavily on sections from Warlords, Inc [38]
Like these links? Subscribe [39] to get them every week!
- Note some FT articles can only be accessed through the search results if you’re using PC/desktop view (from mobile/tablet view they bring up the firewall/subscription page). To circumvent, switch your mobile browser to use the desktop view. On Chrome for Android: press the menu button followed by “Request Desktop Site”. [↩ [43]]