A late August buffet of tasty reads for you before market activity starts to pick up again.| The Investment Ecosystem
It has been a year since the publication of the popular posting “The Active Management Reinvention Project.” What attempts at (real) reinvention have you made or seen made by others? (Time marches on.)| investmentecosystem.com
It has been a year since the publication of the popular posting “The Active Management Reinvention Project.” What attempts at (real) reinvention have you made or seen made by others? (Time marches on.)| The Investment Ecosystem
If your organization is looking for ways to foster or further your continuous improvement efforts, the Investment Ecosystem can help. Change is a constant — you can either be proactive in dealing with the possibilities or reactive in picking up the pieces. Reach out today to explore your options.| investmentecosystem.com
Don't just stop after the headline items. Also: high conviction, growth and value, muni marks, semiliquid funds, venture, AI, growth equity, Bitcoin corporate treasury, and still more.| The Investment Ecosystem
One of these days, there will be a new course at the Investment Ecosystem Academy, probably called “Communication Skills for the Investment Professional.”| The Investment Ecosystem
A series on “the new world of investment work” was begun some time ago by way of postings about talent, how to find it, and how to judge it. This piece (and a follow-up to it) will provide additional blocks of the foundation for that overall topic by focusing on networks and organizational design.| The Investment Ecosystem
The most recent essay on this site is “The Research Behavior of Professional Investors.” It considers the need to assess the current state of investment processes in detail, especially given possible adaptations using AI:| investmentecosystem.com
Good readings about when to cash out buyout funds via secondaries, The "bad bet" of active mutual funds, a possible credit bubble building, effective questioning of general partners, a look back at Lehman "risk management," and a number of other worthwhile ideas.| The Investment Ecosystem
How do professional investors discover new ideas, investigate them (and the larger body of old ideas), and make decisions?| The Investment Ecosystem
Among other topics: Hedge funds as mimetic organizations, the power of model portfolios, private equity and sports, thesis drift, false precision, the index effect in corporate bonds, and permeable analytical standards.| The Investment Ecosystem
A previous posting reviewed Aswath Damodaran’s book, The Corporate Life Cycle. It dealt with the intertwined financial and strategic issues faced by companies (and their investors) across time.| The Investment Ecosystem
These curated readings, which come out every two weeks, identify important ideas and debates in the investment world. Original pieces, on pause the last two months, will appear again soon.| investmentecosystem.com
From moats to risk management, valuable quant code to the mysteries of the markets, and much more, here is the range of worthwhile content that you've come to expect from the Fortnightly.| The Investment Ecosystem
Here is a full slate of ideas for you to digest!| The Investment Ecosystem
If your organization is looking for ways to foster or further your continuous improvement efforts, the Investment Ecosystem can help. Change is a constant — you can either be proactive in dealing with the possibilities or reactive in picking up the pieces. Reach out today to explore your options.| The Investment Ecosystem
It’s the holiday season, when things both speed up (with family commitments, travel, etc.) and slow down (business activity). To celebrate, here is something completely different from the normal Fortnightly. (We’ll be back to regular programming in January. In the meantime, check out our new Bluesky account for interesting things to read.)| The Investment Ecosystem
The most recent posting on the site deals with a common question these days: whether to have a meeting virtually or in person. The question applies across investment roles, although in this case it addresses the due diligence of asset managers. Regarding onsite visits:| The Investment Ecosystem
It used to be that having a meeting meant deciding where (their place, your place, or some other location), when, and why. If the parties were in the same geographic area, it was mostly a question of whether the time spent was commensurate with the assumed value for each of them.| The Investment Ecosystem
All of these postings are freely available.| investmentecosystem.com
All of these postings are freely available.| investmentecosystem.com
Expected Value, Fessing Up, Highly Engineered Profits, and the Natural Language of Finance | investmentecosystem.com
All of these postings are freely available.| investmentecosystem.com
All of these postings are freely available.| investmentecosystem.com
All of these postings are freely available.| investmentecosystem.com
What accounts for the fame of Andy Warhol and the worth of the works that carry his signature?| The Investment Ecosystem
Thursday is Thanksgiving Day in the United States, making it a perfect time to thank you for reading and for passing along our material to others. We truly appreciate it.| The Investment Ecosystem
Investment professionals expect to be judged on the basis of their analytical capabilities, but skill at communicating their ideas clearly is often the deciding factor in terms of how successful they can be.| The Investment Ecosystem
AI this, AI that. You can’t get away from it.| The Investment Ecosystem
The most recent essay on the site deals with an important question for institutional asset owners (and other investors too). It is titled “Does it Matter (How the Money is Made)?”| The Investment Ecosystem
Asset owners face dilemmas about whether the investment function ought to be an island unto itself, only concerned about the optimal risk/return profile for the portfolio, or whether other considerations ought to be factored into decision making.| The Investment Ecosystem
The next essay to be published will be “Does it Matter (How the Money is Made)?” It will delve into questions about whether and how asset owners should consider the business models and practices behind the returns that they receive — or just focus on maximizing those returns.| The Investment Ecosystem
The most recent essay published on the site was “Finding the Right Speed,” which dealt with a problem that doesn’t get much attention. At what pace should an investment decision get made? The answer could vary from nanoseconds to years depending on the type of decision; the key is to design an approach that fits best with the circumstances, but it is easy to be pushed into being too fast or too slow.| The Investment Ecosystem
Across the investment ecosystem, the pace at which decisions are made and implemented varies widely. That raises the question of what the optimal speed should be for any particular investment activity.| The Investment Ecosystem
LDI entered the lexicon of many people during the last couple of weeks, following the tradition of other acronyms in years past. It made the jump from being a topic mostly discussed by pension plans (and the investment providers who sell things to them) to being the focus of market attention.| The Investment Ecosystem
The first part of this look at fuzzy terminology in the investment industry covered the ambiguities around the word “advisor.” Now let’s turn to another confusing description, this time in regard to an investment strategy.| The Investment Ecosystem
A proposed rule from the Securities and Exchange Commission would require an investment advisor that wants to outsource part of its responsibilities to conduct “certain due diligence and monitoring of the service provider.” As is always the case with such rules, there are complexities, including what constitutes a “covered function” that is subject to the rules.| The Investment Ecosystem
Fortnightly| The Investment Ecosystem
The Investment Ecosystem course on due diligence and manager selection is designed to give allocators exposure to concepts and tactics that they can apply to the qualitative analysis of asset managers.| The Investment Ecosystem
Approaching the end of a series of postings on social science research into investment culture, we come to the question of the lack of diversity in the ranks of investment professionals.| The Investment Ecosystem
All of these postings are freely available.| The Investment Ecosystem
One specialty of The Investment Ecosystem is due diligence and manager selection. A short PDF provides a summary of some resources we offer if that’s an area of interest for you.| The Investment Ecosystem
The most recent posting on the Investment Ecosystem, “The Active Management Reinvention Project,” addresses the lack of differentiation across much of the active management universe. It’s worth your time and attention. (If you have feedback on the piece, please send it along.)| The Investment Ecosystem
“Active management” is a big tent that includes a broad range of strategies and organizations.| The Investment Ecosystem
A previous edition mentioned an upcoming posting about “the active management reinvention project.” It’s still coming! (Reinvention takes time.)| The Investment Ecosystem
Jason Zweig’s book, The Devil’s Financial Dictionary, is the subject of the latest Investment Ecosystem posting. (Subscribe here to see all of the content as it is released.) It is an unusual and fun look at the lexicon of the investment business:| The Investment Ecosystem
The back cover of Jason Zweig’s 2015 book summarizes it in this way:| The Investment Ecosystem
The next essay on the Investment Ecosystem is tentatively titled “The Active Management Reinvention Project.” (Sign up to receive all postings via email as they are published.)| The Investment Ecosystem
Welcome to another edition of the Fortnightly, your source for interesting stories and ideas from around the investment ecosystem, (Subscribe here to receive each new Fortnightly and original essays via email.)| The Investment Ecosystem
In the “assets” module of the Advanced Due Diligence and Manager Selection course, there is a section on the relationship between performance and flows. As discussed there, it is widely accepted that flows are responsive to performance.| The Investment Ecosystem