Joshua M Brown

QOTD: Is Fundamental Indexing Passive or Active?

Rob Arnott is the father of fundamental indexing, in many ways (at least a courtroom said so not long ago), so it is interesting to hear this take on how even a passive market index, at its core, is also being active in relation to the economy. I’m inclined to agree – there isn’t anything…

Have no fear of robots

You were looking for something more in-depth perhaps? It is unnecessary. All you need to know about where we’ll fit in with our technological future is here in this modern-day zen kōan. *** This coming week, I am speaking on a panel this week to almost 2000 financial advisors about how we built our robo-advisor, Liftoff,…

This Week on TRB

Cartoon by Scott Stantis, Chicago Tribune  These were the most read posts on TRB this week, in case you missed them:

Felix Zulauf: There is a Dollar Shortage

In this week’s Barron’s, we get the second part of the semi-annual Roundtable and global macro investing legend Felix Zulauf kicks things off with a fairly dire outlook. He’s been dire for a while now (as all macro people must be), so that’s not the news. What I did find interesting was his outlook for…

World’s Most Reluctant Stimulus Program Gets Underway

In what can only be described as the monetary policy-equivalent of a mercy f**k, the Northern European political elites have consented to a quantitative easing program to stave off deflation on the continent. It was a long time coming, but it’s finally here – the ECB will buy bonds from the marketplace and directly from…

Bad with Good Marketing is Still Bad

My new article for Fortune Magazine was just published and it’s a look at one of the most important business lessons I’ve ever learned – all the marketing in the world won’t save a bad product from being a bad product. Unfortunately, I learned that the hard way (like everything else that truly matters in…

Chart o’ the Day: Triumph of the Classic 60/40

Research Affiliates’ Chris Brightman is out with a piece dealing with their return expectations over the next ten years. In the course of making their assumptions, RA takes a look back at the last ten years and calculates the annualized return of a classic 60% equity / 40% fixed income portfolio versus 16 pure asset classes on their…