Where Does the Fed See Systemic Risk? Short answer? Mutual funds and ETFs! Longer answer, from the full text of today’s FOMC Minutes, which summarize the discussions held between January 27th and 28th. There’s some stuff in here about the potential for bubbles in commercial real estate while the volatility in FX and oil don’t…

This is an awesome recap… Hat tip Vegas Joe

I asked that question in the beginning of January here. Buffett had been famously sitting on over $50 billion in cash and valuations had broadly collapsed across the XLE and XOP names. Oil stocks have come back some since then but Warren Buffett was not a buyer. In fact, we learned this week that he…

In this brand new video clip from the Manual of Ideas, Howard Marks makes the important point that investors need to do the following: a) Have an approach b) Hold it strongly c) Accept that, no matter what, there will be times where your approach doesn’t work d) Work within your own skill set and…

As you are likely well aware by now, 2014 was the worst year for actively managed mutual fund performance in three decades. Less than 20% of stock-picking managers were able to exceed the returns of their benchmarks last year and, in some categories, the number was closer to 10%. How on earth could things have…

At the request of so many investment advisors, my friends at Riskalyze share the big trends in the assets going into and coming out of advisor portfolios every week. The underlying data is aggregated from hundreds of thousands of client accounts across the $44 billion and counting that advisors manage on the Riskalyze platform*. I…

New York City has always benefited a great deal thanks to the presence of Wall Street’s job creation engine, not to mention the impact on the broader regional economy thanks to windfall bonuses and boom-time profits. This recovery is quite different from the last one for NYC, however, as the securities industry is not coming…