It’s fashionable today to talk about how Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) are laying the wood to the actively managed mutual fund industry. Cumulative flows into passive strategies and ETFs has been staggering, while the outflows from active funds have been similarly spectacular. Some advisors and former brokers have become self-righteous about ETFs and indexing, but you didn’t hear a word about ETFs from this crowd for decades. ETFs have been around since 1993, but many in the industry were too busy hawking high expense ratio funds with monster front-end sales loads and back-end marketing … [Read more...]
Will There Be A Drone Relay Race to Your Home?
There have been a flood of companies looking to monetize new drone technologies to either gather information or disseminate products for customers, but the most famous of them is surely Amazon. CEO Jeff Bezos has been talking about delivering your products via drone for years now, and even delivered its first packages in December 2016 (see video below). The company calls its drone effort Amazon Prime Air. The idea is that you'll get your products in 30 minutes or less via an unmanned drone that will bypass traffic to swoop in to your location. That's fine for urban areas where population … [Read more...]
Investors Evacuating Big Hedge Funds in a Panic
This isn’t going to end well. The big money of pension investing that is. Imagine all of the money leaving hedge funds, and for indexing? It’s like everyone deciding to run from starboard to port aboard the same ship. Geoffrey Rogow details the hedge fund massacre taking place. Investors pulled nearly $7 billion from the largest publicly traded hedge-fund firm in the U.S. in the first four months of 2017, the latest sign of investor disillusionment with Wall Street’s most prominent money managers. Och-Ziff Capital Management GroupOZM -2.90% LLC said Tuesday that it received net redemptions … [Read more...]
Google and Facebook Push Neural Networks for a Coming AI World
According to WIRED, the potential market for artificial intelligence (AI) chips is enormous. That has companies like Google and Facebook pioneering the AI technology for their own neural networks. Google has developed its own chips designed specifically for neural networks, known as TPUs. Companies such as Intel, nVidia, and Qualcomm are also working on chips for neural netowrks. The chips are essential for efficiency and cost. WIRED's Cade Metz writes: As Google’s TPUs have shown, dedicated AI chips can bring a whole new level of efficiency in data centers, especially as demand for image … [Read more...]
“Great Song, Thanks Alexa”
I highly recommend the Amazon Echo Dot for your family. The sound quality is surprisingly good for something that basically has the look and size of a hockey puck. We have one hooked into the stereo system in our kitchen. Around dinnertime on Saturday night I pulled out the large wild caught shrimp we were having for dinner and said “Alexa, play Jimmy Buffett radio.” As I was in the middle of cleaning the shrimp a song came on that I hadn’t heard in forever. My hands were wet so instead of picking up my phone to Shazam the song, I simply asked "Alexa what song is this?" "Right Down the … [Read more...]
Facebook Spending Big to Fight Fake News Infestation
Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg has directed his company to tamp down on fake news on its site. Part of that process includes hiring expensive fact checkers to read through posted material, and then attempt to find evidence that verifies the claims made in the stories. Facebook is willing to spend the money because it wants to avoid being labeled a media company, which would come with expensive requirements regarding truth in advertising and publishing PSAs. The Financial Times reports: But the more Facebook becomes involved in policing content on its services, the greater the risk that it … [Read more...]
Can Honda Finally Make Hydrogen Fuel Cell Cars Work?
Since 2002 Honda has been trying to obtain lift-off for its FCX fuel cell driven line of vehicles. Now Honda has developed the Clarity Fuel Cell that is the company's latest attempt at making the power train work. The Clarity's range is longer, it has fewer fuel cells, has room for five, and generated 170 horse power. It's a major improvement in fuel cell performance for Honda, but is it enough to gain popular uptake of the niche vehicles? At WIRED, Eric Adams says Honda is suffering from a classic chicken/egg problem that fuel cell vehicles run into at every attempt to popularize them. … [Read more...]
J’aime Paris, Crème Glacee, and Buy Gold
Who doesn’t like ice cream? On a recent trip to Paris we spent the early part of an afternoon on the Left Bank, walking along the eclectic Rue de Seine. If you want to get a feel for how Paris used to be, then Rue de Seine is for you. Standing at the corner where Rue de Buci meets Rue de Seine, outside Bar du Marche, a nice looking gentleman asked in a very friendly tone if he could help me find something (was it that obvious?). In response I asked if he could recommend an ice cream shop and he pointed us to Grom, a perfect place to get a crème glacee between lunch and a late … [Read more...]
How to Learn About Investing
Investing isn’t one of those tasks that you should learn by doing. That’s not to say that you won’t learn a lesson or two about investing if you dive right in, you will, but the lessons may end up costing you more money than you bargained for. The Best Way to Learn About Investing The best way to learn about investing is to do so with books. But which books? You don’t want to just read anything on investing. Ninety percent of what has been published on investing and the stock market isn’t worth your time, effort, or money. You can do more damage than good if you don’t make a diligent effort … [Read more...]
Sell in May and Go Away? Not Vanguard GNMA
Work hard and play hard. My dad used to tell me that a lot. He still does. One year he and I drove down south to look at colleges and we stopped in Myrtle Beach to play golf. As we were eating breakfast I noticed his hair looked a little too shiny. One of the shampoo bottles in his travel kit had the sunscreen. Work and play in investing terms is called counterbalancing. Looking at the average annual return for the last ten-years it’s easy to overlook the years that can decimate a portfolio. Vanguard GNMA was up 4.36% and the S&P 500 was up 7.51% per year. But, did you know … [Read more...]
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