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Comment on share market place methods|Winning with ETF Tactics: Best Asset Managers Share Their Methods for Beating the Market (Minyanville Media) Critiques by l2

l2 — Thu, 17 May 2012 04:25:05 +0000

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

poorly organized, April 4, 2012

l2 (California) -

This review is from: Winning with ETF Strategies: Top Asset Managers Share Their Methods for Beating the Market (Minyanville Media) (Hardcover)

Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)

This is an odd sort of book. There are 8 chapters, but the first 6 chapters cover only 50 pages (out of 200 pages). These 6 chapters are a tutorial on ETFs that is pretty good for beginners. The last 2 chapters of the book (150 pages) seems like a loosely organized set of interviews with various money managers who use ETFs in their work. There is some good information in there, but the writing style makes it very hard to learn from. This book could be improved a lot by distilling and organizing this material to make it easier to follow.

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Comment on share market place methods|Winning with ETF Tactics: Best Asset Managers Share Their Methods for Beating the Market (Minyanville Media) Critiques by Gaetan Lion

Gaetan Lion — Thu, 17 May 2012 04:12:16 +0000

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

Not good advice for the retail investor, February 2, 2012

Gaetan Lion -

This review is from: Winning with ETF Strategies: Top Asset Managers Share Their Methods for Beating the Market (Minyanville Media) (Hardcover)

Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)

This short book on ETFs is divided in two different halves. The first one covering seven of the eight chapters in the book is focused on two themes:

1) The assumed advantage of equal weighted or fundamental weighted indices over traditional market cap weighted indices; and

2) The advantage of extensive market timing in different investment sectors and asset classes facilitated by the broad universe of ETFs vs a traditional buy and hold strategy.

The second half of the book is an interesting survey of 23 different investment managers that use ETFs as their main investment vehicle to create various investment asset allocations.

The ongoing debate regarding indices structure is interesting. The author interviews advocates on the equal weighted or fundamental weighted side. Their main argument is that this approach ensures you don't overweight stocks that have bubbled. They state that the top 50 stocks by market cap account for 50% of the S&P 500, and they consider that excessive. Their index structures correct that. They also state their index structures have greatly outperformed their market cap weighted alternatives.

The whole truth is not straightforward. Within the book, they often praise the Rydex S&P equally weighted index fund (RSP) as they state it has outperformed the S&P 500. However, the RSP is a completely different animal. Within the RSP the largest market cap has the same weight as the smallest one or 1/500th of the whole index. This gives the RSP a strong Mid and Small caps tilt. If you now compare the RSP performance to a Mid cap index fund (VSMAX) or Small cap one (VIMSX), RSP advantage disappears. Its performance is somewhere in between the S&P 500 and either a Small or Mid Cap index. That's all there is to this.

Research Affiliates has structured some successful fundamental index funds (PRF for large caps and PRFZ for small caps). Within such indices the weight of a company is based on a combination of financial metrics including dividends, earnings, revenues, and book value. The idea is the same as for equal weighted index, and that is to avoid buying too much into a stock that has bubbled. Those indices have outperformed their market cap indices counterparts. But, this is an apples and oranges comparison. This index structure within the specific cap targeted gives it a smaller cap and value tilt. Also, those indices have benefitted from a larger weighting of the financial sector in March 2009 when that sector was dirt cheap during the financial crisis. As the financial sector recovered, the PRF indices really took off. If you compare the two graphs (Fig. 5-1 and 5-2 on pg. 44 and 45) you will notice that the fundamental index chronically concentrates on lower valuation sectors such as financials and utilities and is much less invested in higher valuation sectors such as technology and health care. But, that is not always a good thing. Google P/E ratio will always be higher than PG&E. And, there are many valid reasons for that such as earnings growth. This does not mean Google is systematically overvalued relative to PG&E. At times, the opposite may be true.

Also, early in the book there is the allusion that some ETFs are "intelligent" as companies have designed indices that would beat their respective benchmarks through a mysterious synergy of stock composition. PWC is such an "intelligent" ETF. For the first two years it did outperform the S&P 500 only to underperform it steadily since 2006. Yet, the author suggests PWC has outperformed to this day (pg 9). It has not.

This whole debate about index structure deserves further studying. If you are interested to do so, I recommend Robert Arnott The Fundamental Index: A Better Way to Invest on the proponent side. And, on the rebuttal I suggest excellent papers: "Fundamentally Flawed Indexing" by Andre Perold and "Let's Not All Become Fundamental Indexers Just Yet" by Paul Kaplan.

Moving on to the section on market timing and sector rotation, the advice is poor. On page 26, the author shows what a fortune you would have generated if you had invested in the S&P 500 since 1966 and had somehow miraculously avoided in each single year the worst 5 trading days. Similarly, on page 19 the author shows a table that discloses how much the yearly return of ten different asset classes diverged during the past decade. This entails how well one could have done by investing in the asset classes that fared better in every single year. The section heading is: "The Importance of Picking the Right Sectors." Within this same section, the author states "There are many ways to use ETFs to profit from the difference in sector performance." To think that one has the foresight to move in and out of 10 different asset classes with perfect timing from year-to-year... Read more

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Comment on share market place methods|Winning with ETF Tactics: Best Asset Managers Share Their Methods for Beating the Market (Minyanville Media) Critiques by Gadgetman

Gadgetman — Thu, 17 May 2012 03:20:10 +0000

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

Good general Introduction but not a cookbook for winning with ETF, March 20, 2012

Gadgetman (Saratoga, CA USA) -

This review is from: Winning with ETF Strategies: Top Asset Managers Share Their Methods for Beating the Market (Minyanville Media) (Hardcover)

Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)

This book provides a good general introduction to ETFs with its emphasis on explaining the Equal-weighted and Cap weighted Indexes as well as their pros and cons. It would have been more helpful if it provides a broader coverage of the various types of ETF (which are plenty nowadays) such as the leverage and inverse ETFs which are gaining popularity in recent years.

The remaining half of the book focuses on the interviewing of many asset managers involved with ETF investment and trading. Even though the books claims that they are top asset managers, it does not support the claims by showing their actual performance records. I am not able to extract useful information through such interviews as it gives me an impression that they are more of an advertising campaign describing the general principles and methodologies the asset managers use. I am an active trader and investor on various ETF instruments. I am not able to find a clear set of rules nor instructions on how to implement a tradable strategy in this book. Hence using the title of "Winning with ETF Strategies" is bit over-stretching in my opinion.

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Comment on stock market schoolStreets Of Dublin by shardik1

shardik1 — Sun, 13 May 2012 16:41:14 +0000

i dont know about all that but is the smoking hot babe!!!!!!! any more photos of her??

Comment on stock market schoolStreets Of Dublin by summerdreams05

summerdreams05 — Sun, 13 May 2012 16:20:03 +0000

wow, great capture…

Comment on stock market schoolStreets Of Dublin by jmv

jmv — Sun, 13 May 2012 15:34:03 +0000

I forget how I did that!

I thought I managed to find that out rummaging through my stats…oh, look, bighugelabs has a little URL tool that does just that! It’s called Scout:

bighugelabs.com/flickr/scout.php?username=professorspiffy…

"Sorry, no Explore photos were found for that person. "

Ah, you can also do similar kind of searches over at fiveprime.org/flickr_hvmnd.cgi

Wow, I was totally prolific in 2005! 28 Interesting photos! 2 in 2006! None in 2007! Saved by Bahar-bie in 2008! (actually, I think the photo only became as popular as it did because of the long scholarly book extract! The photo is really only so-so!)

: )

Comment on stock market schoolStreets Of Dublin by professorspiffy

professorspiffy — Sun, 13 May 2012 14:52:48 +0000

How did you find that out? I wanna see if I have been on the "interestingness" page!!

Comment on stock market schoolStreets Of Dublin by jmv

jmv — Sun, 13 May 2012 14:39:23 +0000

Hey wow, I totally missed that I was on Interestingness way back on 13 April 2008! Course, I can only take so much credit…it was all Bahar-bie

Comment on stock market schoolStreets Of Dublin by jmv

jmv — Sun, 13 May 2012 13:47:36 +0000

Wowsers again!

A real life Iranian Barbie story:

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/03/09/opinion/09oped_read...

"Once we settled in Los Angeles, I was allowed, over the years, to build up the battalion with Great Shape, Dream Date and Rocker Barbies, plus some Vettes and the Dream House. But toward the end of elementary school, Barbie started to make me feel uneasy. I started to look in the mirror. I began Sharpie-ing the hair on my Barbies black (like mine) and calling them Persian names: Bahareh, Banafsheh, Skippareh. I even attempted to “tan” Peaches ’n’ Cream Barbie’s skin for hours one day, praying for her lotion-slathered skin to turn brown like mine, which it never did. I started to realize the one thing worse than being a foreigner was being a foreigner girl."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/09/opinion/09khakpour-barbie.html

Hey, Persian girls, all I have to say is, don’t feel that way! You are awesome!!!

Comment on stock market schoolStreets Of Dublin by jmv

jmv — Sun, 13 May 2012 13:39:32 +0000

Wow, check out this insanely packed photoset from KK in NYC!

flickr.com/photos/kk/sets/72157613951026180/