Foreign Dividend Withholding Tax Refunds: A Practical Walkthrough
The world of withholding tax recovery on foreign dividends and interest is woven with intricacies, challenges, and a general lack of transparency. This is mainly [...]
Machine Learning and Investing: Forecasting Fundamentals w/ Ensembles
Quantitative factor portfolios generally use historical company fundamental data in portfolio construction. The key assumption behind this approach is that past fundamentals proxy for elements [...]
Cheap vs. Expensive Factors: Does Valuation Matter for Future Returns?
Tesla (TSLA) breached the $100 billion market capitalization in January 2020 and became the most valuable car manufacturer globally. However, valuing the company is challenging [...]
Dividends, Stock Prices, and Inflation.
Building on the concepts presented in my Dividends Are Different article, here we present data and observations highlighting the relationship between inflation and 1) company [...]
Low Volatility-Momentum Versus Value-Momentum Factor Portfolios
Boring versus Cheap Winners
Global Low Volatility and Momentum Factor Investing Portfolios
Betting on Boring Winners
“Price”, ETFs, and Bond Market Liquidity
Multiple events last year reminded us that “price” is a nebulous concept. The most well-publicized price disagreement came in September of 2019 when the public [...]
The Case Against REIT’s
Surveys often reveal investor behavior that is challenging to understand. For example, Preqin’s Alternative Investor Outlook for H2 2019 highlighted the following: 65% of institutional [...]
Low Volatility-Momentum Factor Investing Portfolios
INTRODUCTION Factor investing is hard and some factors make it harder than others. A value strategy results in a portfolio of stocks that exhibit temporary [...]
Timing Low Volatility with Factor Valuations
INTRODUCTION Funds flows are frequently analyzed by investors to gauge the demand for investment strategies, but it represents a challenging exercise. Key issues are data [...]
Dividends are Different
There has been abundant discussion regarding the utility of dividends.[ref]Here are a few examples: dividends, dividends, and more dividends…and Jon See'ds piece on buybacks, if [...]
The Truth About the Panic of 2008 (And the Botched Regulatory Response)
Ask 100 Americans what caused the 2008 financial crisis, and 99 will supply some version of the “Standard Narrative.” That is, they will say that [...]
Alternative Investments – A Field Manual
It's not a perfect world out there and often times alternative funds are mischaracterized, misused, and not put through a rigorous enough portfolio construction process. [...]
The Perils (and Inevitability) of Forecasting
I recently experienced one of those fortunate confluence of events that helped me better grasp the relationship between forecasting (which I feel is futile) and [...]
Large-Cap Price-to-Book Investing: What is Dead May Never Die
In the great book and series Game of Thrones, the inhabitants of the Iron Islands have a saying "What is Dead May Never Die" which [...]
Equity Compensation Planning in a TCJA World
Employee equity & stock options are a major part of the modern compensation plan. That's certainly the case for my financial planning clients. Unfortunately, a [...]
The Re-Death of Value, or Déjà Vu All Over?
The underperformance of value stocks over the past 10 years has received much attention from the financial media and led at least some investors to [...]
Structuring Lower Risk Opportunity Zone Investments
The tax benefits of the new Opportunity Zone program are potentially phenomenal. However, when you dig into the details of the program you quickly realize [...]
Buyer Beware: The Reality of Tax-Loss Harvesting Benefits
Executive Summary Tax loss harvesting is widely promoted, but we think the benefits are generally misunderstood and often overstated.[ref]a recent paper highlighted by Wes on [...]
Using Flexible Spending to Achieve Financial Goals
Financial planning and specifically portfolio "safe" withdrawal rates are often viewed and analyzed from the perspective of rigid rules that can't be broken - i.e., [...]