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Each investor—whatever his or her background, experience or training—should employ a systematic protocol in the pursuit of growth and stability. An investment process should embody an investment philosophy. Grounded by best practices, this philosophy should stem from a set of beliefs that prescribe how to generate superior risk-adjusted returns in varying market environments and cycles.

Every investor knows about Yale University and the extraordinary success of its endowment portfolio. Indeed, many families have tried to emulate Yale’s approach to asset management, for obvious reasons. Unfortunately, fewer people are aware of of the Norway Government Pension Fund. While there are certainly aspects of the Yale Model that are useful to private investors, the Norway Model seems to speak much more directly to families and, equally important, seems to be implementable by all but the smallest family investors.

Over the past 20 years, economic, political and technological events have led to a dramatic growth in Emerging Market economies. Increased globalization, the dissolution of the communist bloc and the opening up of previously inaccessible markets such as China have all played a part in the expansion of investment opportunities in these countries, which has in turn helped to reshape the investment universe in Emerging Markets. The Emerging Market corporate bond market has become particularly appropriate for a wider range of investors due to its size, liquidity and improving transparency.

The four articles in this paper provide investment perspectives on the U.S. recovery, the Eurozone crises, the nature of China’s landing and whether policy makers have unleashed deflation or inflation.

This basic primer for investment managers provides a thorough introduction to exchange-traded funds – what they are, how they work, why they can be useful – and examines why regulators have been taking a closer look at them lately.

Deciding whether to invest in an art fund? This article examines challenges in defective title that art funds and their investors may face in the unregulated art and collectibles market.

Today’s collectors increasingly view art as an investment. Best practices should be applied to collectibles similar to those applied to traditional assets like homes and automobiles. This article reviews the important and complex issues surrounding the legal and financial risks that pervade ownership of this “new asset class.”

This paper examines the gap between the theory of portfolio construction and its practice. In particular, it analyzes some of the problems in the application of portfolio optimization techniques to individual investors and identifies ways to compensate for the theory's shortcomings.

In this issue of Eton’s Investment Outlook, the firm describes how Modern Portfolio Theory has ruled the financial seas for the past 60 years, its shortcomings, and why they view goals-based investing as a better framework.

The goals-based investing framework utilizes Abraham Maslow's “hierarchy of needs” approach by defining, quantifying and prioritizing financial goals across multiple family generations. The brilliance of this process is that it recognizes something very fundamental about our financial behavior: We assign different levels of priority to different goals, and are willing to tolerate different levels of risk in pursuing those respective goals.