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Step 1: Active Investor
1.2 |
DEFINITION |
1.2.1 What Is Active Investing?
Active investing is a strategy that investors use when trying to beat a market or appropriate benchmark. Active investors commonly engage in picking stocks, times, managers, or styles. As later steps demonstrate, active investors who claim to outperform a market also claim the power to predict the future. When accurately measured, this is simply not possible. Surprisingly, the analytical techniques that active investors use can best be described as qualitative or speculative. They include predictions of future sales and earnings growth, and are often based on gut feelings and intuition. On the other hand, the passive index investing approach is best described as quantitative or scientific. Indexing techniques include statistical analysis of risk and return data of 20 years or more, in addition to extensive measurements of numerous performance criteria. Many indexes are now based on 75 years of risk, return, and correlation data.
1.2.2 What Is Index Funds Investing?
As opposed to active managers, investment managers of index funds are far
less active in the buying and selling of stocks, because they do not pick stocks
or managers, time markets, pick styles, or make attempts to forecast the future.
As previously mentioned, the analytical techniques that index funds managers
use are best described as quantitative or scientific.
Approximately 15% of all individual assets and 44% of all institutional assets
are currently invested in different index funds. Many institutional funds are
one hundred percent indexed. Even Charles Schwab and Company recommends that
investors put 80% of their large cap assets into index funds. Mr. Schwab himself
has 75% of his mutual funds in index funds. Other indexing proponents include
Barclay's Global Investors, Dimensional Fund Advisors, The Vanguard Group,
Warren Buffet, Peter Lynch, numerous academic institutions, Economic Nobel
Laureates, and Index Funds Advisors (IFA). Insurance companies use a similar
approach to indexing when setting premiums for the risks taken by insuring
against thousands of different random events. Most of those premiums are also
invested in index funds while held in reserves for the inevitable claim payment.
Most investors believe that index funds investing means investing in familiar
market indexes, such as the Standard and Poor's 500. S&P 500 funds are
structured with the aim to provide the same investment performance as the S&P.
By holding all the stocks in the same proportionate amounts as the S&P
index, the fund index represents about 86% of the market value of all U.S.
companies, mostly large blue chip stocks. The problem is that market indexes,
such as the S&P 500, were not originally designed as investment vehicles.
Since the late 1980’s, index funds have expanded and are based on more
discrete customized indexes. Originally designed for very large pension funds,
institutional-style index funds are meant to capture various financial risk
factors or dimensions of the market. Exposure to a risk factor such as company
size or value constitutes a risk dimension of the market. Investors have been
compensated with higher returns for risk exposure to these risk factors since
1929. These dimensions of the market can also be referred to as indexes. Indexes
are groups of stocks that have common risk and return characteristics and comply
to specific and clearly defined sets of rules of ownership. These groups of
stocks include companies from the United States, foreign companies, and even
emerging markets. There are additional indexes within these markets, such as
value, large value, small growth, large growth, real estate securities, and
many fixed-income investments, such as short-term and long-term treasury bonds,
municipal bonds, and corporate bonds. Companies are purchased and held within
the index when they meet the index parameters. Stocks are sold when they move
outside of these parameters and no longer meet the index rules.
An example of an index fund is Dimensional Fund Advisors' (DFA) Micro-Cap index
fund, which invests in securities of U.S. companies whose size (market capitalization)
falls within the smallest 4% of the total market universe. This includes all
stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange and the American Stock Exchange,
as well as those listed in the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated
Quotation Over-the-counter (NASDAQ OTC) market. Another example would be DFA’s
Small Cap Value Fund, which invests in companies ranked in the lowest eight
percent by size, as well as the highest 25th percentile by book-to-market ratio
(value).
DFA funds are now available to individual investors through a small qualified
group of registered investment advisors who have demonstrated their understanding
and commitment to the concepts described in this 12-Step Program.
The overwhelming majority of investors are active investors. Extensive research
by many academics and investment professionals has shown that investors cannot
beat a market in the long run with stock, time, manager, or style picking.
It is disconcerting that about seventy percent of all institutional money invested
in U.S. stocks is still actively managed.
The table below summarizes the differences between the two approaches to investing.
1.2.4 Beating a Market
We reference the phrase “
beating a market” throughout this 12-step Program. This is defined
as the attempt to obtain a higher net return on investments from a portfolio
of stocks, bonds, or mutual funds than from a relevant and investable index
or benchmark. The net return includes adjustments for all commissions,
loads, fees, expenses, risks, and federal and state taxes. It is calculated
over a reasonable period of at least five years, but preferably over 20
years. The net return of an active investor’s stock portfolio can
then be paralleled to the index fund of a comparable index. The index may
consist of the entire stock market or a more specific index, such as small
capitalization value stocks. No investor over or underperforms an index.
They simply invest in something other than the index. Since the index is
the only source of long-term risk and return data, why would an investor
subject hard earned savings to anything other than the index?
The most basic tenet of all investing is that exposure of your money to a higher
level of risk should be rewarded with a higher expected return. In contrast,
lower levels of risk should correlate to a lower expected return. One of the
problems with measuring the performance of stock market investing is the lack
of a standardized system of benchmarks from which to measure performance. This
lack of benchmarking is the black hole of investing. If there is no definitive
benchmark, it is impossible to determine if exposure to risk has been properly
rewarded. In other words, has the active investor really beaten a market with
repeatable skill, or can it just be attributed to luck?
1.2.5 Risk
There are many terms used by investment professionals and academics in their
quest to define risk. These include markets, benchmarks, asset classes, styles,
style boxes, investment objectives, risk factors, market dimensions, market
segments, categories, market averages, buckets of stocks, rules of ownership,
slices of the market, industry classifications, and indexes such as Dow Jones
Indexes, Standard and Poor's Indexes, Russell Indexes, Wilshire Indexes, Morgan
Stanley Capital Indexes, Wired Index, and many more. Diversification and measures
of volatility, such as standard deviation, are also used to describe risk.
Every one of these is an attempt to identify common risk and return characteristics
among groups of stocks included in that classification. To reduce confusion,
market or index will often be substituted for these terms.
An appropriate challenge to the investment industry is a call to action to develop an SEC-approved standard to measure the risk of various investments. The three-factor model proposed by Eugene Fama and Kenneth French in 1992 would be an excellent starting point. This model is discussed later in Step 8: Riskese™.
1.3 |
PROBLEMS |
1.3.1 Active Investors are Everywhere
About 85% of investors are active investors. The most popular strategies in
attempting to beat a market include stock, time, manager, and style picking.
Steps 3, 4, 5, and 6 describe these strategies and explain the futility of
all these methods.
Stock pickers try to pick winning stocks rather than diversify their portfolio.
Market timers, or time pickers, try to make money by timing the markets. They
think they can strategically pick specific times to get in and out of a market,
believing this approach is more profitable than a buy-and-hold strategy. Time
picking also refers to the purchase or sale of individual stocks.
Manager pickers buy stock portfolios or mutual funds managed by the money managers
who seem to have the best recent performance record.
Style pickers identify which style, such as large growth or small value, is
the next style to perform above and beyond the others.
The majority of individuals in the U.S. who are currently invested in stock
mutual funds holds shares of an actively managed mutual fund. However, according
to data from Strategic Insight, about three out of every five dollars invested
in stock funds in 2001 were invested in index funds - nearly 60% of stock fund
cash flow. This means more investors are understanding the benefits of indexing. 
1.3.2 Active Investors are Gamblers
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Active investors believe they are in control. They delude themselves that
they have a special understanding of the market, a superior edge over less
knowledgeable investors, making them immune to disaster. The truth is that
all investors can access the same information as professional money managers
through the Internet and many other sources. Still, many investors believe
they are smarter and more sophisticated than the average investor. Those under
this illusion fail to realize how much investment performance depends on luck.
Most of them eventually pay dearly for this mistake.
Active investing in the stock market is a lot like casino gambling. Take a
look at the numerous comparisons in the various news articles below. (Note
the references to addiction.)
 Paul Samuelson, Nobel Laureate, MIT Economist |
 The title speaks for itself. by James Cramer, 2002, Cramer in Stockaholic Recovery Mode |
New studies in the field of neuroeconomics confirm the release of dopamine when presented with the opportunity of a surging stock. This validates and confirms the addictive nature of Stockaholics™. The powerful allure of monetary reward leads to the overwhelming urge to trade stocks or funds. It has now been shown through brain imaging studies that the circuits that switch on at the prospect of big profits are the same as the ones that lead to the addictive nature of cocaine, casino gambling, alcohol, chocolate, and sex, just to name a few. The brain images below tell the story.
In the October
2002 issue of Money Magazine, the highly respected journalist Jason Zweig
writes a ground-breaking article about the new evidence of the release of addiction
related dopamine in our brains. He declares,
"the dopamine rush we get from long shots is why we play lotto, invest
in IPOs, keep too much money in too few stocks and invest with active portfolio
managers instead of index funds." He goes on to say that, "our
brains are wired to force us into forecasting; it is a biological imperative.
In fact, humans are born with what I've come to call "the
prediction addiction." Zweig reports that there are several
researchers working on nueroeconomics at this time. At Harvard, Hans Breiter
is leading a project and has stated that they have discovered a "striking" similarity
between the brain's reaction to cocaine, morphine, and the prediction of
financial rewards. Please take the time to read Jason's new book on this
subject, Your
Money & Your Brain. Also see Center
for Neuroeconomic Studies Duke University.
Followup on above video: Tim Sykes, 25, ran a top-ranked, short-bias fund called
Cilantro Fund Partners, which he founded in 2003 in his senior year at Tulane
University in New Orleans. After suffering a roughly 35% loss over two years,
on October 1, 2007, Timothy closed his hedge fund.
In the June 2002 edition of Money Magazine, once again Jason Zweig gets to the bottom of what investors really earn. He describes the difference between the returns that mutual funds report and the actual returns of the average investor in those funds. Active investors chase hot funds. As a consequence, they end up with less than one fifth the funds' annual returns. When inflation and our estimate of taxes are deducted, it is not a pretty picture for active investors. See figure 1-1.
Table 1-2 illustrates some of the details of this unique study. The large gap between the funds' and shareholders' returns was a shock to even the researchers. The reason for this gap is attributed to active investors who followed the destructive behavioral patterns that Dalbar Research had been describing since 1994. These patterns include waiting for funds to have a good year or two followed by pouring in a flood of cash just before the fund reaches its peak. Then they ride the fund to near bottom and sell.
One encouraging exception was the Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA) institutional index funds. DFA investors are limited to either large institutional investors or individuals who have been educated by specially trained investment advisors. Because the shareholders of these funds buy and hold diversified portfolios at all times, they ride out the market gyrations and end up obtaining market rates of returns. The table below shows the worst big funds ranked by how investors performed relative to the funds and five DFA funds listed in the article.
In one example from the study, the Firsthand Technology Value fund racked
up an impressive annualized return of 16% from 1998 to 2001. However, the investor
return over this period was a devastating 31.6% loss. In total
it was estimated that investors lost $1.9 Billion in this fund over this period,
while the fund reported time-weighted returns of 16%. The head of fund marketing
for Firsthand stated, "... people lost a lot of money because they took
oversized bets in technology at the wrong time." A careful analysis of
the chart below will reveal the tragedy of active investors behavior.
Figure 1-A
A study released by Dalbar in March 2009 came up with similar results, but over a much longer period. The study indicated that during the 20 years from 1989 through 2008, the average stock fund investor earned returns of only 1.87% per year, while the S&P 500 returned 8.35%. On an inflation adjusted return, the average equity fund investor actually lost $17,712 on the value of a $100,000 investment made in 1989, while the inflation adjusted growth of $100,000 invested in the S&P 500 would have been $292,329. Even better, an investor who owned an all-equity, small value tilted, globally diversified index portfolio such as IFA’s Index Portfolio 100 would have grown a $100,000 investment to an inflation adjusted $343,861 as shown in Figure 1-2.
Dalbar previously conducted similar studies in 1994 and 1998. The 1998 study found that the return of the S&P 500 was five and a half times greater than what the average investor earned. All three studies showed that the average fund investor earned much lower returns than the S&P 500 or the average mutual fund. Clearly, investor behavior can have a far more negative impact on investment performance than investors realize.
Dalbar,
Inc. Investor Behavior Studies 2001 - 2002 - 2003 - 2004 - 2005 -
2006 - 2007 - 2008
(Past IFA Dalbar Quantitative
Analysis of Investor Behavior (QAIB) Charts)
Some investors can benefit from enlisting an investment educator or mentor
who will focus on changing their investing behavior, encourage long-term investing,
and discourage the gambling practices of trying to beat a market.
The fund tracking service Morningstar started disclosing these "investor
returns" in 2006. On the Data Definition page of their web site, they
state that "Morningstar investor returns (also known as dollar-weighted
returns) measure how the typical investor in that fund fared over time, incorporating
the impact of cash inflows and outflows from purchases and sales. In contrast
to total returns, investor returns account for all cash flows into and out
of the fund to measure how the average investor performed over time. Investor
return is calculated in a similar manner as internal rate of return. Investor
return measures the compound growth rate in the value of all dollars invested
in the fund over the evaluation period. Investor return is the growth rate
that will link the beginning total net assets plus all intermediate cash flows
to the ending total net assets."
Now that Morningstar is tracking such
data, investors bad behavior is finally quantified, as well the
advantages of using a passive advisor who helps reduce investor
error. In the Morningstar
Indexes Yearbook: 2005, they analyzed how the average index
investor did on their own versus those that are guided by an advisor
using asset class index-type funds from Dimensional Fund Advisors.
Here is what they had to say:
"Consider the success Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA) has had in selling its funds through advisors who undergo training on the merits of passive investing and in portfolio construction theory. Consider that over the past decade the dollar-weighted return of all index funds was just 82% of the time-weighted return investors could have gotten with those funds. Yet, the figures for DFA are much better. In fact, the dollar-weighted returns of DFA funds over the past 10 years are actually higher than their time-weighted returns [see Table 1-3]. Suggesting advisors who use DFA encourage very smart behavior among their clients, even buying more out-of-favor segments of the market and riding them up, rather than buying at the peak and riding the trend down, which is usually the case with fund investors."
Table 1-3
The emotions of active investors go up and down like a roller coaster, leading them to negative returns on average, after expenses and taxes are deducted. The lessons in this 12-Step Program should allow investors to resist the behaviors that have caused them such despair and poor results in the past.
As a contrast, passive investors invest whenever they have the money to invest and regardless of market conditions, as seen below.
Figure 1-4a
To make things even better for passive rebalancers, they do the opposite of active
investors and trim back indexes that have grown beyond their target allocation
and buy more of indexes that end up being under their target allocation. This
may result in selling and selling assets to active investors at the most beneficial
times. (see Step
12, paragraph 12.2.3 Rebalancing Portfolios)
Figure 1-4b
As further support for the passive rebalancing strategy, here is what academics
say about the relationship between economic conditions and expected investment
returns:
1) Expected returns on bonds and stocks are lower when economic conditions
are strong and higher when conditions are weak.
- Fama and French, "Business
Conditions and Expected Returns on Stocks and Bonds," (November 1989), Journal
of Financial Economics
2) The risk premium is expected to be countercyclical: lower in good times
and higher in bad times.
- Campbell, J. and J. Cochrane (1999), By Force
of Habit: A Consumption-Based Explanation of Aggregate Stock Market Behavior
, Journal
of Political Economy, Vol. 107, 205-251
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