Many of our peers are the modern day equivalent of horse-buggy sales reps biding their time as the new-fangled assembly line began pumping out car after car.Can't speak for all but I'm checked out for the weekend.
Ah, intellectual leverage & the social web.
The top 10 jobs in demand for 2010 did not even exist six years ago. Education can't keep with it. Meaning someone entering high school (even college) now need to be able to perform jobs that don't yet exist using technologies that have yet to be invented.
Know University of Phoenix right? Them the 'online' college. And will I am certain steamroll you or if no initial contact, try to trick you into getting on the line for the hard sell. (must read internal training memo) Oh other fun fact, our tax-dollars are bank rolling over 75% of loans. (link)
Read: Money Comes Rolling In
Showing posts with label economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economy. Show all posts
11.06.2009
8.26.2009
Technical Analysis Mutual Fund
A very rare occurrence in the mutual funds sales world circa 2009, a long-only strategy with no track record, just raking in the dough.
John Hancock Technical Opportunities Fund (JCTAX),[link] is consistenly pulling in $1 million a day, despite a 5% front end load (or I guess maybe because of it) and a 2.05% expense ratio.
JCTAX: http://www.jhfunds.com/Fund/PortfolioMonthlyHoldings.aspx?FundID=2Y30&ProductType=MutualFund&ClassCode=A
Now that we have had 135 long/short funds open since ‘06 and PM’s/wholesalers/fin. media all had their shot at explaining the value of uncorrelated assets since they could raise money there maybe they all actually learned something and realized that the most intelligent and logical thing to do is put the long-only equity money across index ETF funds, even the fixed portion, wont really make difference over most time-frames.
And thus, the only funds you should be looking at are strategies that you could not come close to implementing on your own and/or have low/negative/nil correlation with the market.
More: (some good tidbits on MF distribution/how shops are run)
• Only one other U.S. MF the $8.6 million Huntington Technical Opportunities Fund begun in May 2008, uses technical analysis exclusively.
So you can see the difference in distribution - never heard of Huntington Technical Opportunities and despite being part of a relatively large bank, it only has $8.6M in assets in about 15 months of life. Meanwhile the John Hancock fund, with an army of brokers pushing a product (to share in the load) can acquire that much within 9 days. If you are curious the Hutington fund is down 24% in the past 1 year period and has a whopping 2.94% expense ratio. (from it's holding list it simply holds various ETFs - which makes sense since that seems to be all anyone is doing nowadays when not speculating in Fannie Mae or AIG)
What was the impetus at John Hancock? One of the reasons actually is one of my main beefs with the industry - the fact a cash holding is considered "wrong", when in fact it can be a "position".
• Hartstein developed a fund that could shift all its money out of equities after attending a conference of financial advisers at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston in January. “Listening to those folks talk about their frustrations about managers not being able to raise cash, I came back from that and starting asking, ‘Who out there has a strategy that we could leverage, that has the flexibility to raise cash?’” he said.
The more alpha-centric strategies, the better, it will seem very obvious in some years down the road. I picture the 401k plan in the next 20 years stocked with 20 different managers who all did 10% annualized for multiple years with different investment styles. (not long-only, stay fully invested, a.k.a vanilla style box options)
Hat Tip: Fund My Mutual Fund
John Hancock Technical Opportunities Fund (JCTAX),[link] is consistenly pulling in $1 million a day, despite a 5% front end load (or I guess maybe because of it) and a 2.05% expense ratio.
JCTAX: http://www.jhfunds.com/Fund/PortfolioMonthlyHoldings.aspx?FundID=2Y30&ProductType=MutualFund&ClassCode=A
Now that we have had 135 long/short funds open since ‘06 and PM’s/wholesalers/fin. media all had their shot at explaining the value of uncorrelated assets since they could raise money there maybe they all actually learned something and realized that the most intelligent and logical thing to do is put the long-only equity money across index ETF funds, even the fixed portion, wont really make difference over most time-frames.
And thus, the only funds you should be looking at are strategies that you could not come close to implementing on your own and/or have low/negative/nil correlation with the market.
More: (some good tidbits on MF distribution/how shops are run)
• Only one other U.S. MF the $8.6 million Huntington Technical Opportunities Fund begun in May 2008, uses technical analysis exclusively.
So you can see the difference in distribution - never heard of Huntington Technical Opportunities and despite being part of a relatively large bank, it only has $8.6M in assets in about 15 months of life. Meanwhile the John Hancock fund, with an army of brokers pushing a product (to share in the load) can acquire that much within 9 days. If you are curious the Hutington fund is down 24% in the past 1 year period and has a whopping 2.94% expense ratio. (from it's holding list it simply holds various ETFs - which makes sense since that seems to be all anyone is doing nowadays when not speculating in Fannie Mae or AIG)
What was the impetus at John Hancock? One of the reasons actually is one of my main beefs with the industry - the fact a cash holding is considered "wrong", when in fact it can be a "position".
• Hartstein developed a fund that could shift all its money out of equities after attending a conference of financial advisers at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston in January. “Listening to those folks talk about their frustrations about managers not being able to raise cash, I came back from that and starting asking, ‘Who out there has a strategy that we could leverage, that has the flexibility to raise cash?’” he said.
The more alpha-centric strategies, the better, it will seem very obvious in some years down the road. I picture the 401k plan in the next 20 years stocked with 20 different managers who all did 10% annualized for multiple years with different investment styles. (not long-only, stay fully invested, a.k.a vanilla style box options)
Hat Tip: Fund My Mutual Fund
7.29.2007
Last Week Market Recap
People headed for the exit sign in the stock market last week. Factors widely acknowledged throughout the rise in stock prices such as the financial excesses in private equity, sub-prime loans/housing, and the global credit boom were generally reported as responsible. With no direct catalyst for Mr. Market to pick last week to slow gains I am curious if there is any reason or logic to be learned from the timing.
Two weeks ago investors had just as much information about the economy as they do now. Timing the market is an awful game to play (there are plenty of statistics that validate this but just trust me.. ) BUT the way the market fluctuates is important for all participants to take note of. Having followed since 2004 I have begun to sense what movement is coming next. I called the downturn in the market earlier this year several days prior. (At an investment club meeting-I made no money off of my hunch, which makes it pretty worthless.)
There is no way to explain the logic and no easy way to learn this "sense". My only thought is that through a combination of checking the averages daily, regularly feeling out general investor sentiments, knowing your history, watching the charts, and staying well-read you can have a better chance of knowing when a good entry point is. I know blah, blah, blah, do this and do that but no one said that it was easy. However, this "sense" is important for index investors as well as more active investors. You can never expect to be completely right but it's worth trying. The ebb and flow of human nature is reflected in the moods, beliefs, and emotions of investors. A greater understanding of human nature can help give meaning to the movements in financial markets.
Two weeks ago investors had just as much information about the economy as they do now. Timing the market is an awful game to play (there are plenty of statistics that validate this but just trust me.. ) BUT the way the market fluctuates is important for all participants to take note of. Having followed since 2004 I have begun to sense what movement is coming next. I called the downturn in the market earlier this year several days prior. (At an investment club meeting-I made no money off of my hunch, which makes it pretty worthless.)
There is no way to explain the logic and no easy way to learn this "sense". My only thought is that through a combination of checking the averages daily, regularly feeling out general investor sentiments, knowing your history, watching the charts, and staying well-read you can have a better chance of knowing when a good entry point is. I know blah, blah, blah, do this and do that but no one said that it was easy. However, this "sense" is important for index investors as well as more active investors. You can never expect to be completely right but it's worth trying. The ebb and flow of human nature is reflected in the moods, beliefs, and emotions of investors. A greater understanding of human nature can help give meaning to the movements in financial markets.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
