It is our view that inflation should be moderate over the near term. However, we recognize that portfolios of different investors have different sensitivities to sharp increases in inflation. To that end, the discussion here centers on methods to hedge unexpected inflation in those specific portfolios.
We believe one of the most important economic developments to monitor is whether the U.S. economy can wean itself off government stimulus before bond vigilantes take the matter into their own hands. In short, we are in the midst of a cyclical recovery that could be overshadowed at some point by the longer term structural challenges.
Euro area countries need to coordinate their economic policies better to prevent macroeonomic imbalances. The proposed set of policy indicators would identify such imbalances and indicate action to be taken if thresholds are too high or low. But this system has structural problems related to timing, response and proactive planning.
As the financial world grows increasingly integrated and jurisdictions share ever more information, taxpayers who continue to hold undeclared taxable accounts are at much greater risk of being discovered. The new voluntary disclosure program may represent the best chance to come clean with the IRS.
This historical study suggests that monthly rebalancing appears to have minimal or no benefit in terms of end-of-year portfolio values except in years of high volatility. A look at rebalancing a 60/40 portfolio either monthly or annually from 1960 through 2009 showed an average annual difference between the two strategies of only 8 basis points.
Heightened market volatility is emerging as the new framework for investment decisions. Suggestions for succeeding in this environment include focusing on a dual-asset allocation approach, taking into account a greater number of worst-case scenarios, assessing liquidity and leverage carefully, and looking for volatility-related opportunities.
Behavioral finance theory offers some compelling explanations for financial crises, including the most recent one. Supplementing standard finance theory with behavioral and psychological criteria can help clarify investors' decision-making processes and explain the influence of behavioral biases in stock market crashes.
While both exchange-traded funds and index separately managed accounts offer the comparatively low fees and superior pretax returns common to nearly all forms of indexing, the authors say that only SMAs can deliver sizeable return benefits to the taxable accounts of wealthy investors.
The FTC is seeking input on this report, which proposes safeguards for data gathered online and offline from consumers. The three main areas addressed are privacy by design in all business practices, simplified privacy choice for consumers and greater transparency related to company data policies.
Aggresive government policies may jump-start the U.S. economy, but longer-term risks remain. We suspect investors will be happy to say goodbye to the last decade during which investment returns in most asset classes were far below historical norms. As we begin this new decade, we are optimistic about one important issue: equity prices are not at the extreme “bubble” levels that they were a decade ago—due to the dot.com era—and that alone, we believe, portends better returns in the coming decade.