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Learning Center

Portfolio Rebalancing: The Whys and The Hows

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Summary Ideally, to eliminate style drift investors should rebalance daily. However, because the real world involves costs, investors should reduce, not eliminate, style drift to an acceptable level. Investors should rebalance wherever there is sufficient cash to make the effort worthwhile, thus eliminating any tax issues and either eliminating or minimizing trading costs. An investor’s...

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Emerging Markets, Should They Be in Your Portfolio?

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From 2000 through 2010, the MSCI Emerging Markets returned 10.9 percent a year, outperforming the S&P 500 by 10.5 percent a year. In typical fashion, investors flocked to emerging market funds. Since then, returns have been poor, providing negative returns in both 2011 and 2013 (as well as in the first two months of this...

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Confusing Familiarity With Safety: International Investing and Currency

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Summary Investors often don’t properly diversify because they think international investing is risky. U.S. equities are mistakenly assumed to be the “safest.” Even if the U.S. is the safest, that does not mean investors should have all their eggs in one basket. Financial economists recommend that investors add international assets to their portfolios, because they...

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Quality Factor Global in Scope

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William Sharpe and John Lintner are typically given most of the credit for introducing the first formal asset pricing model, the capital asset pricing model (CAPM). CAPM provided the first precise definition of risk and how it drives expected returns. The CAPM looks at returns through a “one-factor” lens, meaning the risk and return of...

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Quality Works on EM Stocks Too

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My last post showed that the quality (or profitability) premium provided valuable insights into not only U.S. stock returns, but international developed markets as well. Today I’ll look at the question of whether this quality factor applies to emerging markets. The simple answer is yes. To review, the profitability/quality factor tells us that more profitable firms outperform...

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A Closer Look at Value Premiums

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Today’s post will begin a two-part series that explores the research examining risk-based explanations for the value premium, which, unlike the risk-based explanations of the size premium, have been a bit controversial. In June 1992, the paper “The Cross-Section of Expected Stock Returns” was published in the Journal of Finance. The authors, Professors Eugene F....

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4 Tax Tips Your Accountant Will Never Tell You

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I have a high regard for accountants. They have an extremely difficult job. In order to maximize tax savings for their clients, they need to understand and interpret an incredibly complicated Internal Revenue Code. Former U.S. congressman John Hostettler once said, “The Internal Revenue Code and regulations add up to 1 million words and is nearly seven...

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How to Avoid Getting Ripped Off By ETFs

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Exchange-traded funds are open-ended funds that can be bought and sold on a stock exchange. You can think of them as a hybrid version of both stocks and index funds. You buy them using a broker, just like you would to purchase a stock. They consist of a portfolio of securities that are designed to...

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