Excess Returns

Sometimes as investors we tend to focus their efforts on the wrong things. We will spend a lot of time building complicated strategies. We will focus on trying to beat the market. We will trade when there is no need to. But in doing this we will often miss what is usually the biggest driver of our returns: our own behavior.  In this episode, we speak to Joe Wiggins, author of the Behavioural...

David Dreman is a well known contrarian investor and the author of Contrarian Investment Strategies: The Next Generation. Dreman's Kemper-Dreman High Return Fund was one of the best-performing mutual funds ever, ranking as the best of 255 funds in its peer groups from 1988 to 1998, according to Lipper Analytical Services. In this episode, we take a detailed look at the investment strategy Dreman o...

Investors will seek any type of edge they can find. Many run complicated models to try to generate an excess return. Others endure the pain that generating long-term excess returns using factors often entails. But sometimes the easiest ways to boost returns are also the most simple.  In this episode, we look at the rebalancing premium and how properly rebalancing a portfolio can outperform th...

When we started our podcast in 2019, we were hoping we could create something that would be educational and informative for people who follow our content. But one of the biggest surprises for us is how much we have learned ourselves.  We have been fortunate to interview some of the smartest investors we know, and each interview has taught us something new and expanded our understanding of som...

Although the word unprecedented tends to be overused, we are seeing many things in the market currently that many of us haven't seen before. Fiscal stimulus has increased to levels that truly are unprecedented, inflation may become an issue for the first time in a long time, and many investors are arguing the fundamentals don't matter anymore   This week, we are fortunate to be joined by Rese...

In a world where inflation is not a threat, a standard 60-40 portfolio does an excellent job of providing growth, while also limiting downside when stocks get choppy. You don’t need anything more than the last 40 years, when the 60-40 portfolio had its best stretch ever, to illustrate that. The 60/40 has produced a 9.2% annualized return going back to 1988 – that is an impressive return for a port...

We have had many experts in factor investing on the podcast. We have even had some who have published research in academic journals. But we haven't had anyone who has produced the volume of research that our guest this week has. Jason Hsu is the co-founder of Research Affiliates and founder of Rayliant. He is also an associate editor of the Journal of Investment Management and serves on the e...

Research shows that value stocks can generate an excess return because the market tends to overestimate their problems, and value investors benefit when it realizes that. But despite that being true on average, many value stocks actually have even bigger problems than the market has priced in. This week, we look at one of the quantitative strategies we follow that attempts to separate the winners...

There have been so many books written about Warren Buffett that it can be hard to keep track of them. But before all of that could happen, someone had to be the first. This week we are joined by Robert Hagstrom, whose book The Warren Buffett Way was the first book that took a detailed look at Buffett's investment strategy. And subsequent to that, he has also published The Warren Buffett Portfolio...

The growth of ARK investments has been one of the biggest stories of the past decade in the ETF space. its flagship fund, the ARK Innovation ETF has seen its asset explode over the past year or so. In January of 2020 the fund had about $1.8B in assets and at the peak earlier this year the fund was at $27B.  But many in the investing community have worried that the firm's rapid growth and conc...

With the rapid growth in ETFs, it seems like almost every product idea possible has been tried. So it is rare to find something that is unique and hasn't been done before. This week, we talk to someone who has done not one, but two things that were never done before in the ETF space.  We speak with Robert Cantwell, the founder and CEO of Upholdings. Robert was not only the first person to con...

There is no shortage of discussion in the media about the valuation of the market. And with the big market run we have had recently, valuations have once again become stretched. But what does market valuation tell us about the future returns of the market? And is there anything investors can do to adjust their portfolios based on market valuations? In this episode, we take an in depth look at the...

The 4% rule has become one of the cornerstones of retirement planning. And in many ways that makes sense because investors who have spent 4% of their portfolio annually have historically had a very high chance of making their money last. But with expected returns on both stocks and bonds at historical lows, the 4% rule may not work as well in the future as it has in the past.  This week, we e...

The stock market has had a huge run since last March. That fact, combined with unprecedented government stimulus, the potential for future inflation and other risk factors has many investors worried. In this episode, we look at some things investors can do to deal with high levels of uncertainly, and the risks associated with them. We also look at the difference between what works in theory and wh...

We are currently in a very challenging time for building multi-asset portfolios. The 60-40 portfolios is coming off one of its best decades ever, but the expected future returns on both stocks and bonds are very low. And unprecedented monetary and fiscal stimulus have added additional variables into the equation. This week we talk to Jim Masturzo, who is a partner and head of multi-asset at R...

The success of of the low volatility factor can be challenging to explain. Investing theory teaches us that to get an additional return, we need to take additional risk and if we reduce risk, our return should come down with it. But low volatility seems to defy that rule. In this episode, we look at the low volatility factor, how it is defined, and why it works. We also look at how the returns of...

Deep value investing is about buying companies that other investors don’t want. It is about investing in companies where the current situation doesn’t look great – actually in many cases it looks horrible. On average, investors tend to overestimate the problems in these types of businesses  and as a result, stocks of these companies get cheap. But for some of these cheap companies, the situat...

The emerging market universe includes a very diverse set of countries, many of which are sorely lacking in the types of freedom enjoyed by their people. Some of the biggest countries in emerging market indexes like China are also some of the worst offenders in this regard. It has been commonly accepted by many that investing in these types of companies is unavoidable for investors who want emergin...

This week, we look at some interesting research that took a unique approach to explaining the value and size premiums. We examine the paper "Migration" by Eugene Fama and Kenneth French. The paper grouped stocks into categories based on their size and valuation and then looked at how the migration between those groups impacted both the value and size premiums. We take a look at what they found as...

With the stock market at all-time highs and returns over the past year some of the best in history, the word "bubble" is getting thrown around more and more by investors. But before we jump to conclusions, it is first important to understand what a bubble is and what the term means from a practical standpoint for investors.  In this episode, we look at bubbles through a framework based on the...

The last 40 years have been an exceptionally strong period for a portfolio of stocks and bonds. With stocks performing well and bonds benefitting from a tailwind of constantly falling interest rates, a portfolio consisting of only the two asset classes has been all investors have needed.  But a deeper look at market history reveals that there were significant periods where a standard stock an...

Investors tend to associate momentum with growth stocks. If you try to name a typical momentum stock off the top of your head, you will probably think of names like Google or Facebook or Amazon. And that is especially true when we have gone through a growth dominated period like we have in the past decade. But the reality is that momentum doesn't care about growth. It doesn't care about value eith...

Many investors think all value strategies are fairly similar to each other. And as a result they expect the value funds they invest in will all perform similarly over time. But the reality is that the behind the scenes details that go into building a value strategy can play a major role in how it performs and lead to major deviations in performance among value funds. In this episode, we take a loo...

There have been hundreds of books written about Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. So it rare for a book come out that does something that none of the others have. But a new book coming out in April does exactly that by offering the first full chronological history of Berkshire Hathaway, from the period prior to Buffett all the way to the current day. In this episode, we talk to Adam Mead, the...

The Motley Fool is not known for their quantitative models. They are known for a discretionary growth style of investing that attempts to identify game changing companies and then holds them for the long-term, seeking to generate returns that are multiples of their original investment.  But despite their discretionary nature, their book The Motley Fool Investment Guide did contain a detailed...