Independent Investor

Of course my returns beat the market!

Published on 2012-02-16 08:55:29

Market Watch Article “...business professors Markus Glaser and Martin Weber of Germany’s University of Mannheim, analyzed the performance of individual investors’ online brokerage accounts. One objective was to determine whether investors were accurate in assessing their actual returns. The researchers compared investors’ real results to how they thought they fared. Here, in brief, is what they found: Bad guessing. Investors were unable to correctly estimate their own past portfolio p

Why hedge funds don’t live up to their name

Published on 2012-02-10 11:22:19

From Reuters “Most hedgies guessed wrong last year or stayed their own doomed course. Like most actively managed investments, hedge funds fell victim to the myth that you can predict—and avoid—market gyrations on a regular basis. Except for fixed-income funds, every other category of hedge funds lost money in 2011, and all told, the sector lost about 5 percent. In a new book entitled “The Hedge Fund Mirage,” author Simon Lack said real investor profits were a negative $308 billion fr

Yale’s Swensen: Index Funds Best Plan for Most

Published on 2012-02-07 12:34:42

Bloomberg Article “Unless an investor has access to “incredibly high- qualified professionals,” they “should be 100 percent passive—that includes almost all individual investors and most institutional investors,” he said. Most active mutual funds are more interested in collecting fees than in boosting returns for investors, Swensen said… hedge funds’ traditional fees of 2 percent of assets and 20 percent of profits “are a huge issue,” Swensen said, and unmerited except for e