2016

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Global Leaders Investment Letter - Q4 2016

Brown Advisory

Global Leaders Investment Letter - Q4 2016 ajackson Sat, 12/31/2016 - 09:50 Global Leaders Strategy Investment Letter - Q4 2016 This letter discusses Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election and the ensuing market upswing. They also discuss their views on the market ‘rotation’ of stocks with perceived value qualities outperforming those with growth qualities.

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Normal Accidents

The Irrelevant Investor

The S&P 500 is about to wrap up its eight consecutive year of positive returns. If this continues into next year, it would match the longest streak of all-time. For some context, in the nine years from 1991-1999, the S&P 500 gained 450%; In the recent 8 year period, the S&P 500 is up 193%. In addition to strong performance from U.S. stocks, you've probably noticed that international stocks haven't been keeping up.

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Global Leaders Investment Letter - Q4 2016

Brown Advisory

Global Leaders Investment Letter - Q4 2016. ajackson. Sat, 12/31/2016 - 09:50. Global Leaders Strategy Investment Letter - Q4 2016. This letter discusses Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election and the ensuing market upswing. They also discuss their views on the market ‘rotation’ of stocks with perceived value qualities outperforming those with growth qualities. . .

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Time Is All You Have

The Irrelevant Investor

"Time is all you have. And you may find one day that you have less than you think." - Randy Pausch When I finished reading When Breath Becomes Air , my wife walked into our bedroom and found me with tears running down my face. I'm not talking about a single renegade tear that fought its way down my cheek, this was a whole army of them. I had a similar experience while reading The Last Lecture (although this time I made sure to lock the door!).

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Less Stress, More Success: Accounting Best Practices & Processes for 2025

Speaker: Amanda Adams, Fractional CFO, CPA

Are you ready to elevate your accounting processes for 2025? 🚀 Join us for an exclusive webinar led by Amanda Adams, a seasoned fractional CFO and CPA passionate about transforming back-office operations for finance teams. This session will cover critical best practices and process improvements tailored specifically for accounting professionals.

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Mindless Investing Slays Another Giant

The Irrelevant Investor

Odey Asset Management, a London hedge fund which was seeded by George Soros in 1991, is having a rough year. The fund has lost nearly half its value, because "Passive investing has taken money which typically would have been in the bond market and deposited it in the equity market." I cannot imagine how an investor feels after reading this. This is on the same are you f*king kidding me level as when Bernstein claimed indexes were worse for society than Marxism.

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Self-Examination

The Irrelevant Investor

Richard Feynman once said "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool." This is true in all walks of life- we think we're better looking than we really are, we think we're smarter, better drivers, better parents, and better children. Of all the places that self-deception exists, investing has to top the list.

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All Indexes Are Not Created Equal

The Irrelevant Investor

Small value stocks are up 25.5% YTD. Small value stocks are up 32.5% YTD. Nope, that's not a typo. The first one represents Vanguard's ETF, VBR. The second and better performing small-cap value ETF is IWN, from iShares. As you can see from the chart below, they were neck and neck until the election, and then IWN kicked into high gear. The reason for this divergence is 29% of IWN is in financials, VBR is just 18%.

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Even With Perfect Information

The Irrelevant Investor

Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal recently had Victgor Haghani, co-founder of LTCM and CEO of Elm Partners Management, on the Odd Lots podcast. Haghani told a story about an experiment he did in which subjects were given a loaded coin. They were told that the coin will land on heads 60% of the time. The subjects were given half an hour to flip the coins and there was real money on the line.

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Aaron Brooks and Saving Money

The Irrelevant Investor

Ben Carlson recently wrote about the parallels between dieting and personal finance. In both cases, we know exactly what we're supposed to do, but just knowing is not nearly enough. Our brains function in such a way that sometimes it helps to completely remove our mind from the equation. Other times we have to introduce a barrier to the way we think.

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Avoiding Lease Accounting Pitfalls in 2025: Lessons Learned from Spreadsheet Errors

Speaker: Abdi Ali, Sr. Lease Accounting Consultant

Join this insightful webinar with industry expert Abdi Ali, who will discuss the challenges that can arise from managing lease accounting with spreadsheets! He will share real-world examples of errors, compliance issues, and risks that may be present within your spreadsheets. Learn how these tools, while useful, can sometimes lead to inefficiencies that affect your time, resources, and peace of mind.

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Don’t Fear the Reaper

The Irrelevant Investor

In a recent Bloomberg article, Luke Kawa writes how investors are positioning themselves as interest rates rise: Cumulative inflows into the iShares Short Maturity Bond ETF (NEAR), Floating Rate Bond ETF, SPDR Bloomberg Barclays Short Term High Yield Bond ETF, PowerShares Senior Loan Portfolio , and the Vanguard Short-Term Corporate Bond ETF topped $400 million in total for the first session of the week, the highest since the inception date of the most recent member of this product group.

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Use the MACD, And Moving Average Indicators To Perfection!

The Irrelevant Investor

This was the subject line of an email that came into my inbox tonight and it's something I've been thinking about for a while. No, not how to use MACD to perfection, but how investors think about signals and indicators. A few weeks ago I was riding the subway, when after a minute or two of sitting at a station, on came the dreaded “we are delayed due to train traffic ahead of us.

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TEDxWilmington | Jump to the New S Curve: Unleash the Power of Inclusion

Brown Advisory

TEDxWilmington | Jump to the New S Curve: Unleash the Power of Inclusion. ajackson. Mon, 12/05/2016 - 07:33. Speaker: Dune Thorne. Dune Thorne explores the statistic that 70% of high school valedictorians are girls yet 4% of S&P CEOs are women. How can businesses be more supportive of women and gender diversity? Dune illustrates the “S curve” as a potential solution and discusses the need for a new approach and a new conversation—which can benefit women and benefit businesses.

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TEDxWilmington | Why Investing in Public Education is So Risky

Brown Advisory

TEDxWilmington | Why Investing in Public Education is So Risky. ajackson. Mon, 12/05/2016 - 08:20. Speaker: Atnre Alleyne. Atnre Alleyne talks about our track record of investing in the right thing - and the wrong thing, using Solyndra, the Snuggie, and the movie "Moneyball" as examples. We’ve got to think differently. To advance we need to reconsider our investments and disrupt the inequitable system.

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Back to Basics with Reconciliations

Join us in this webinar, where we share best practices on how to think about the reconciliation work each month, when best to do reconciliations, how they should be prepared, and some common pitfalls to avoid. Learning Objectives: This course objective is to understand how to properly prepare and review balance sheet reconciliations and its impact on the financial statements.

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TEDxWilmington | Better Health, Lower Cost—Absolutely!

Brown Advisory

TEDxWilmington | Better Health, Lower Cost—Absolutely! ajackson. Mon, 12/05/2016 - 09:12. Speaker: Janice Nevin, M.D., MPH. Janice Nevin shares her family’s story of caring for her terminally ill father - and the significant challenges they faced despite their collective expertise. She contrasts this with the more common challenges faced by other patients who are less advantaged.

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The Permanent Portfolio

The Irrelevant Investor

For the last 35 years, the classic 60/40 portfolio returned 10.5% a year. It's hard to imagine that these results will be matched over the next 35 years, which has a lot of people looking to alternative ways of managing a portfolio. Today I'm going to examine one of these alternatives, the "Permanent Portfolio," which was outlined in William Bernstein's "Deep Risk" (and elsewhere).

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Making More From Less

Brown Advisory

Making More From Less. achen. Tue, 11/29/2016 - 14:44. The directors at many nonprofits today are finding that, by some measures, working for the common good has never been so tough. The budget gap for nonprofits has widened because of a slump in their three sources of funds—donations, grants and portfolio returns. Charitable giving to foundations in 2015 shrank 3.8% from the previous year to $42.3 billion, according to Giving USA. 1 Also, from fiscal year 2009 until fiscal year 2016, federal ag

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Mental Scar Tissue

The Irrelevant Investor

The costliest mistake 2% investors make is timing the market. They sell after losses and buy back only when the coast is clear. The problem is not just the money you leave on the table this time, but these mistakes leave behind scar tissue that compounds in our brains. It doesn't take long before we're unable to think objectively. Rather than viewing a buy/sell decision as independent from all others, we think about the outcome of previous mistakes and the regret we felt after buying or selling

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2024 Lending Outlook: Innovations and Evolutions in the Financial Sector

As we step into 2024, the lending landscape evolves rapidly with technology, regulations, and market dynamics driving change. For banks and financial institutions to stay competitive and meet the evolving needs of their customers, these drivers must be understood and engaged with. Lenders can anticipate significant transformation fueled by technological advancements, regulatory shifts, and changing consumer behaviors.

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This Is Not Bearish

The Irrelevant Investor

The S&P 500 just made an all-time high for the 11th time this year, and the 1134th time since 1928. Today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average crossed 19,000 for the first time ever. The natural inclination is that now might not be the best time to put new money to work. The data doesn't support this, at least not in the short term. The table below shows that average returns six months and one year following an all-time high has been stronger compared with all other days.

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When History Suddenly Becomes Irrelevant

The Irrelevant Investor

"The fact that something so unthinkable could occur has had a lasting impact on my view of life and on investing in particular" - Peter Bernstein I'm extremely proud of the event we put on this week, the Evidence-Based Investing conference. There were a lot of like-minded investors in the room and on the stage, so we ended the day with a panel called "The Limitations of Evidence.

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Making Sense When There is No Sense to be Made

The Irrelevant Investor

Our brains were built to save us from ourselves. We misremember the past and pretend we can predict the future. We're able to make sense of things when there is no sense to be made. Here's an example- I was staying at a hotel a few weeks ago in San Diego and I walked into the shop to get some sunscreen. I was going to speak onstage the next day and I burn faster than most people.

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Commanding Heights: Amazon, Microsoft Expand Profits in the Cloud

Brown Advisory

Commanding Heights: Amazon, Microsoft Expand Profits in the Cloud achen Tue, 11/08/2016 - 10:54 Amazon and Microsoft have expanded their market share and strengthened their dominance of cloud computing in much the same way that mainframe manufacturers came to rule their sector 50 years ago. The two companies in the most recent quarter boosted earnings and increased profits from the sale of computing power and data storage via the Internet by stepping up sales of sophisticated software, data anal

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Banking on Loyalty: Holistic Financial Advice for Unparalleled Business Growth

Speaker: Joe Buhrmann, MBA, CFP®, CLU®, ChFC® Senior Financial Planning Practice Management Consultant eMoney Advisor

During an era of evolving consumer preferences, the banking sector is undergoing a profound shift. As customers continue to broaden their perspectives, banking professionals must support their customers' financial wellness by providing holistic financial advice that aligns with individual goals and circumstances. Without adapting, financial institutions will find that loyalty may crumble amid uncertainty.

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Commanding Heights: Amazon, Microsoft Expand Profits in the Cloud

Brown Advisory

Commanding Heights: Amazon, Microsoft Expand Profits in the Cloud. achen. Tue, 11/08/2016 - 10:54. Amazon and Microsoft have expanded their market share and strengthened their dominance of cloud computing in much the same way that mainframe manufacturers came to rule their sector 50 years ago. The two companies in the most recent quarter boosted earnings and increased profits from the sale of computing power and data storage via the Internet by stepping up sales of sophisticated software, data a

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Living In Multiple Timeframes

The Irrelevant Investor

Stocks always have a positive expected return. With the passage of time however, these expected returns turn into realized returns and obviously they're not always positive. We just can't know what the market will deliver, so it's best to plan and prepare for a wide range of outcomes. This range is determined by a number of factors, including but not limited to the business cycle, valuations, interest rates, inflation, and the collective mood of millions of investors.

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Asset Allocation: Caution Toward High Dividend Yielding Stocks

Brown Advisory

Asset Allocation: Caution Toward High Dividend Yielding Stocks achen Fri, 10/28/2016 - 11:25 Why Have High Dividend Yielding Sectors Done Well This Year? Reach for yield. In response to weak nominal growth, central banks have maintained accommodative monetary policies, pushing interest rates to historic lows. Given this low-yield environment, investors have flocked to stocks that yield more than traditional U.S.

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Asset Allocation: Caution Toward High Dividend Yielding Stocks

Brown Advisory

Asset Allocation: Caution Toward High Dividend Yielding Stocks. achen. Fri, 10/28/2016 - 11:25. Why Have High Dividend Yielding Sectors Done Well This Year? Reach for yield. In response to weak nominal growth, central banks have maintained accommodative monetary policies, pushing interest rates to historic lows. Given this low-yield environment, investors have flocked to stocks that yield more than traditional U.S.

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Navigating Financial Storms: Strategies for Building Resilient Balance Sheets

Speaker: Carolina Aponte - Owner and CEO, Caja Holdings LLC

In today's rapidly changing business environment, building a resilient balance sheet is crucial to the survival of any business. A resilient balance sheet allows a company to withstand financial shocks and adapt to changing market conditions. To achieve this, companies need to focus on key strategies such as maintaining adequate liquidity, managing debt levels, diversifying revenue streams, and prioritizing profitability over growth.

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Please, Give Me a Break

The Irrelevant Investor

2016 got off to a volatile start, it felt like every day was either up or down one percent. In fact, when I made this chart on March 11th, 28 of the first 46 days of the year fit this criteria. Now seven months later, that number has fallen off a cliff, collapsing to just 22%. And just as we all thought would happen, volatility vanished as we got closer to the election.

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Here’s Why Technical Analysis Gets a Bad Rap

The Irrelevant Investor

There are a lot of people who don't believe in the merits of technical analysis. It doesn't make sense to them that you can look at past price movements and determine future price movements. If stock prices are driven by earnings, how can a chart provide any insight? Well, yea, stocks are driven by earnings in the long-run, but in the short-run they’re driven by sentiment, which can be observed by measuring supply and demand.

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Caught Up in the Minutiae

The Irrelevant Investor

The recent Wall Street Journal article, The Dying Business of Picking Stocks, has generated a lot of buzz over the last day and a half. Despite the tidal wave of money going out of stock picking and into indexes, and the thousands of articles that accompany them, it's still not entirely clear what it means to be an active or passive investor. Here is how I think about it: The active investor attempts to beat a benchmark by either picking individual securities or by timing the market.