Sunday links: worthwhile weekend reading

abnormalreturns
December 4th, 2005

Paul Kedrosky in his always excellent Weekend Reading piece for TheStreet.com points to a profile of David Swensen. Interesting to note that Yale’s allocation to real assets, real estate and commodities, is up in 2005.

Chucke Jaffe at Marketwatch.com weighs in on the mutual fund vs. separately managed account debate. Jaffe finds some claims by supporters of SMAs unsupportable.

Mark Hulbert in the New York Times highlights some academic research which shows the effects aging has on individual investors’ investment decision making. The results are interesting in that they show conflicting effects. On one hand older investors seem to have learned some important points about portfolio management, however they are less able to profitably pick stocks.

Norm Alster in the New York Times finds some equity funds able to outperform the market despite being weighed down by large asset bases. That is all well and good, and may demonstrate skill on the part of the managers. However if the take away for investors is that assets under management doesn’t matter, then this article does readers a disservice.

A new sports-related Michael Lewis piece in the New York Times magazine is always worth a link. However, the Freakonomics guys have a minor quibble.