529 Plan Distribution Flowchart
I recently had a conversation with a client who had a big fat 529 plan and was planning to take a distribution from it to [...]
Academic Research Insight: Does Social Capital payoff during times of crisis in the markets?
Title: Social Capital, Trust, and Firm Performance: The Value of Corporate Social Responsibility during the Financial Crisis Authors: Karl V. Lins, Henri Servaes, and Ane [...]
Reconciling Individual Stock Returns and Factor Portfolio Returns
Those in the financial media have recently been writing multiple stories on a fascinating working paper, "Do Stocks Outperform Treasury Bills?" by Hendrik Bessembinder. We [...]
How To Sell A Business Tax Efficiently via Structured Installment Sales
When an owner sells their business, the IRS and state taxing authorities will be there to take as much of it as they lawfully can. This one tax bill can be the single largest tax payment an owner will ever make and may represent over a third of their entire net worth. Furthermore, it comes after years of paying income/payroll taxes, working harder, and generally taking more risks than non-business owners. And when an owner wants to retire, the process is significantly more complicated than an employee who simply has to give a few weeks’ notice and maybe rollover a 401K. That’s because a business owner’s life’s savings is locked up in the value of their business. In fact, selling their business IS their retirement plan. So, accessing that wealth at the best possible price, in a way that is tax and cost efficient, is critical to their retirement. In this article, we introduce a unique service offering that can significantly reduce the impact of taxes and increase the price when selling a business. We’ve designed it to be used by business owners and their financial advisors (Wealth Managers, CFP’s, M&A Advisors, CPAs, etc.). If you are a business owner, or operate on behalf of business owners, read on.
ETF Product Development: Past, Present, and Future
On October 1st, 1908 Henry Ford introduced the Model T to the world. The power of the Model T was that it democratized the automobile [...]
Academic Research Insight: VOLATILITY WISDOM OF SOCIAL MEDIA CROWDS
Title: VOLATILITY WISDOM OF SOCIAL MEDIA CROWDS Authors: Ahmet K. Karagozoglu and Frank J. Fabozzi Publication: Journal of Portfolio Management, Winter 2017 [...]
Assessing the Potential Market Impact of Passive, Short-volatility, and Low-volatility Strategies
The market has recently experienced record low levels of realized volatility and the VIX™ (volatility index) has fallen to historic lows. Moreover, the incredibly popular [...]
Machine Learning for Investors: A Primer
If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor. — Albert Einstein Machine learning is everywhere now, from self-driving cars to [...]
Academic Research Insight: Does Past Performance Matter in Investment Manager Selection?
Title: DOES PAST PERFORMANCE MATTER IN INVESTMENT MANAGER SELECTION? Authors: BRADFORD CORNELL, JASON HSU, and DAVID NANIGIAN Publication: JOURNAL OF PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT, SUMMER 2017 (paper ) What are [...]
Factor Timing Investigation: Interest Rates, Value Spreads, and Factor Premiums
Now that the Federal Reserve has begun the process of raising interest rates, and has announced their intention to begin to unwind their policy of [...]
Academic Research Insight: Does Gender Matter on Wall Street?
Title: GENDER AND CONNECTIONS AMONG WALL STREET ANALYSTS Authors: LILY FANG AND STERLING HUANG Publication: THE REVIEW OF FINANCIAL STUDIES, V.30, SEPTEMBER 2017 (version here) What are the [...]
Ben Graham on Passive Investing
The passive investing revolution is truly upon us. Ever since 1975, when Jack Bogle introduced the first index mutual fund, passive indexing has marched on [...]
What Happens When you Data Mine 2 million Fundamental Quant Strategies
As we have mentioned before, here, here and here, there is overwhelming evidence that the number of stock anomalies in the universe is much lower than [...]
Support Academic Research by Filling Out The Financial Analysts Survey
Prof. Richard Price, an old friend, co-author, and Alpha Architect advisory board member, is working on some cool new co-authored research that requires audience participation! [...]
Academic Research Insight: Do Dividends Still Matter?
Title: WHAT DIFFERENCE DO DIVIDENDS MAKE? Authors: C. Mitchell Conover, CFA, CIPM, Gerald R. Jensen, CFA and Marc W. Simpson, CFA Publication: Financial Analysts Journal, [...]
Trend-Following with Valeriy Zakamulin: Trading in Various Financial Markets (Part 8)
In our final blog post, that finishes the trend-following series, we briefly review the results of the forward-tests of the profitability of various trend following [...]
How ETF Trading Works: A Deep Dive Into ETF Market Making
Many in the financial service industry are now using ETFs to build portfolios. Some love the tax-efficiency of ETFs relative to mutual funds, while others use [...]
Academic Research Insight: Does one size retail financial advice fits all?
Title: RETAIL FINANCIAL ADVICE: DOES ONE SIZE FITS ALL? Authors: FOERSTER S., LINNAINMAA J.T., MELZER B.T., PREVITERO A. Publication: JOURNAL OF FINANCE, V.72, AUGUST 2017 (version here ) What [...]
Trend-Following with Valeriy Zakamulin: Trading the S&P 500 Index (Part 7)
The Standard and Poor's (S&P) 500 index is a value-weighted stock index based on the market capitalizations of 500 large companies in the US. This [...]
Short Term Momentum and Long Term Reversals Can Coexist
In their seminal 1993 paper, “Returns to Buying Winners and Selling Losers: Implications for Stock Market Efficiency,” Narasimhan Jegadeesh and Sheridan Titman reported significant returns [...]