Asset Management

by
Nick Prassas,
on April 6, 2010 -
Asset Management
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California Pension Shortfall

From a new SIEPR report on the grotesque pension underfunding problems at California’s major plans

by
Nick Prassas,
on December 15, 2009 -
Asset Management
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Bloomberg: Recession Repeat Lurks Without White House Truce

An interesting article, drawing a parallel between the government’s behavior toward the financial industry during the Great Depression, and today.

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by
Nick Prassas,
on November 4, 2008 -
Asset Management
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I had planned to write a piece on the limits of diversification, at a time when the underpinnings of almost every asset class is based on the twenty-five year bull market in interest rates. However, the following article from The Economist is well-presented. All bets are off Oct 30th 2008 From The Economist print edition [...]

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by
Nick Prassas,
on October 19, 2008 -
Asset Management
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When 401(k) Investing Goes Bad

At a time when everyone is worried about their retirements accounts, I thought the following article might offer some perspective. Teachers in West Virginia offer a valuable lesson for what not to do By JENNIFER LEVITZ Wall Street Journal August 4, 2008 Seventeen years ago, West Virginia school employees joined millions of workers nationwide in [...]

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by
Nick Prassas,
on October 3, 2008 -
Asset Management
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Some Investors Stampede to Alpacas and Turn to Drink

Please don’t do this Who can blame an investor for taking to the bottle? Andy Pick, a 49-year-old stay-at-home father in Atlanta, recently bypassed the stock market for liquid assets — $120,000 in champagnes. He bought 400 bottles, mostly 1996 vintage, that he says he plans to “sit on” for 10 or 15 years and [...]

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by
Nick Prassas,
on June 24, 2008 -
Asset Management
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The Illusion of Control

The Wall Street Journal ran a recent article on a new variation of target-date and life-cycle mutual funds (which automatically adjusts the stock and bond allocation as a targeted retirement date approaches). The new “target payout” and “managed payout” funds adjust the stock and bond mix to provide a steady, above-market rate of return to [...]

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by
Nick Prassas,
on April 23, 2008 -
Asset Management
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Chance this is the bottom? Zero.

Loan default rates have barely moved off of expansionary period levels, let alone typical typical defaults in a normal recession. Excellent article from Seeking Alpha can be read here.

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by
Nick Prassas,
on April 18, 2008 -
Asset Management
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Psychology

“If a betting game among a certain number of participants is played long enough, eventually one player will have all the money. If there is any skill involved, it will accelerate the process of concentrating all the stakes in a few hands. Something like this happens in the market. There is a persistent overall tendency [...]

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by
Nick Prassas,
on April 14, 2008 -
Asset Management
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Tools versus Carpentry

Yesterday, I bought a router. I’m not sure what a router does, but I read in a magazine that every home workshop should have one. So I went to Home Depot and a “Certified Specialist” helped me pick out the best one. When I got home, I discovered that I really needed a jigsaw. Not [...]

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by
Nick Prassas,
on June 20, 2007 -
Asset Management
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The Failure of CAPM, Compression of Risky Asset Spreads and Paths Back to Normalcy

Harry Markowitz, one of the original founders of modern portfolio theory, recently explored in a simple yet elegant paper how the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) crumbles in the real world (Markowitz, 2006). A striking consequence of this paper, which he does not mention but is relevant for investors today, is that the increasing availability [...]

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