Blog: Cutting Through the Noise

Short Termism - Doesn't Make Sense

Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on August 21, 2008

Dan Lewin, a friend and former colleague, sent me an interesting piece last week.  It is a letter to clients from Howard Marks, the Chairman of Oaktree Capital Management, a U.S. asset manager.  It is all good, but I particularly ...

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It's Tough Beating the Index

Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on June 5, 2008

Why do active managers find the S&P 500 so hard to beat? In his book More Than You Know – Finding Financial Wisdom In Unconventional Places , Michael Mauboussin takes a different approach to the question.  He starts by assessing ...

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Investment Blogs

Excerpt from Scott Ronalds's blog on May 8, 2008

The Globe and Mail published a report on investment blogs in Tuesday’s paper, where a number of their columnists identified some of their favorite blogs. If you’re a fan of our blog, you may want to check out a few ...

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An Intrinsically Attractive and Flexible Vehicle

Excerpt from Scott Ronalds's blog on April 25, 2008

Jonathan Chevreau’s article in Wednesday’s Financial Post highlights the latest book that bashes the mutual fund industry, The Investor’s Dilemma: How Mutual Funds are Betraying Your Trust and What to do About it , written by Louis Lowenstein. It’s books ...

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Experimenting with Tom's ebook

Excerpt from Neil Jensen's blog on January 14, 2008

I've been following the rise in self-publishing and book publishing on demand (POD). One of the leaders in the field is lulu.com , who allow you to publish hardcopy books in quantities as little as one. Just for fun, we selected ...

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Book Review: The Four Pillars of Investing

Excerpt from Neil Jensen's blog on December 28, 2007

I've finally gotten around to reading William Bernstein's popular 'The Four Pillars of Investing', first published in 2002 by McGraw-Hill. As the title suggests, Bernstein approaches understanding investing via four broad themes: Theory - emphasizes that investment returns are primarily a ...

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Thumb Sucking = Better Long-term Returns

Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on November 27, 2007

Research studies have consistently shown that investors do worse than the mutual funds they invest in. And depending on what study you read, the shortfall is sometimes quite substantial. David Sung, from Nicola Wealth Management in Vancouver, has written an ...

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Book Review: Active Value Investing

Excerpt from Neil Jensen's blog on November 25, 2007

Canadian Capitalist first brought Vitaliy Katsenelson's Active Value Investing to my attention in this posting . Katsenelson believes that we are in a range-bound market, defined as a market that goes up and down, but ultimately ends up back where ...

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ABCP - Another Made-in-Canada Defective Investment Product

Excerpt from Scott Ronalds's blog on October 10, 2007

There has been a lot written about Canada’s asset-backed commercial paper debacle. Unfortunately, it’s not easy to sort it all out, given that everyone has an axe to grind on the issue. Diane Urquhart is an independent analyst who I ...

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The ETF Diaries - Part IV: As Splinters Get Thinner, They Get Sharper

Excerpt from Tom Bradley's blog on September 25, 2007

On efficientfrontier.com , William Bernstein recently published an article titled ‘ Comin’ Around Again? ’ in which he made some comments on the proliferation of ETF offerings in the U.S. I think it serves as a good follow-up to our ...

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Longevity Ultimately Leads to Success

Excerpt from Scott Ronalds's blog on September 12, 2007

Richard Croft wrote a good article in yesterday’s National Post about how longevity is the most important factor in determining investment success. “In the end, one strategy or style is probably as good as another...the problem for average investors is ...

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Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist

Excerpt from Scott Ronalds's blog on September 6, 2007

Tom's been busy reading during his recovery from surgery (we've taken away his laptop, but we can't take away his library). He recently dusted off Roger Lowenstein's book, Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist , and added it to ...

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