Cartoon by SMBC

The Equity and Quant Strategy group at Bank of America Merrill Lynch updates us on the latest data about active manager performance. Year-to-date, it’s been very difficult for US stock pickers. When benchmarked against the Russell 1000 large cap index, a shockingly small number of funds are above the bogey… Year to date, 25% of managers…

These were the most read posts on the site this week, in case you missed them… These are the 10 Cheapest and 10 Most Expensive Stocks in the S&P 500 The Rube Goldberg Machine Real Investors Root for Down Markets Fired Managers Outperform Hired Managers Some media mentions Psst…Wanna do the Greatest Trade Ever?   Cartoon…

Ladies and Gentlemen of the waning days of the cyclical bull market, may I present to you the latest innovation in armchair macro strategy – TYTE and WYDE, the world’s first-ever ETF products based on the Credit Default Swap markets! TYTE and WYDE, or “Tight” and “Wide” as we’ll soon be calling them, allow investors to…

There are two things Nick Colas and the strategy team at ConvergEx seem to watch very closely to gauge the condition of the markets. One is the Vix of each sector and the other is the correlations between both sectors and other asset classes. In his note this morning, Jurassic Park Market, Colas tells us…

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Just when I think I can no longer be shocked by a statistic about the bad behavior of investors and its consequences, a new one comes running across my path that leaves me completely floored. The latest stat I’ve come across concerns the hiring and firing of managers because of three-year track records, a exercise in faildom…

From Barry’s Masters in Business interview series on Bloomberg Radio – the full audio of his discussion with Michael Mauboussin about the roles of skill and luck in life and investing. Listen to this and become smarter.