Articles (141)

As many of our readers know, we don’t think too highly of the active mutual fund industry. Not because we have a personal vendetta against them, but because their pursuit of attempting to outperform the market using other investors’ money has only enriched themselves ...Read More

A select group of market factors are known to drive stock and bond returns. Some offer less advantages to fund investors, such as momentum, which can prove difficult to capture without running up trading and other transactional costs.  Research by professors Eugene Fama and ...Read More

The latest SPIVA (S&P Indices Versus Active) scorecard is out tracking active fund managers in the past 15 ...Read More

As part of IFA's ongoing series crunching data of active fund managers, we put under our microscope mutual funds from Eaton ...Read More

As part of our fiduciary mandate, the fund families we choose hold corporate managers to high ethical ...Read More

As part of IFA's series breaking down active fund managers' performance, we now put Goldman Sachs under our ...Read More

During any downtime in this holiday season, here are some quick ways to sharpen your finances heading into ...Read More

IFA takes a look at how mergers and acquisitions impact stock valuation metrics for long-term investors.                                 ...Read More

When it comes to investing, we can identify many risks investors assume, either knowingly or not. At Index Fund Advisors, we see it as our core mission to get investors to take the risks that are worth taking (e.g. market, size, value, term and default) and avoid the ones that ...Read More

A common question is why IFA' prefers funds from Dimensional Fund Advisors. The answer is fairly straightforward -- ...Read More

There’s a misconception in the markets: value stocks have lost their vigor. Here's a big picture view of what's going ...Read More

The value of our advice is only as good as the data provided. Here's a tip sheet to make the process more ...Read More

S&P research shows that higher-tiered share classes don't provide a significant advantage for active ...Read More

A new study by Wharton researchers compares 16-plus years of returns for the TV star's AAP portfolio, which spotlights many of his top ...Read More

The third quarter produced a script worthy of the best tear-jerking romantic novel. The world's two biggest economies couldn't resolve an ongoing trade tiff, angst about Brexit and the European Union continued and sliding manufacturing data in the U.S. helped to raise fears of a ...Read More

By nature, markets are volatile. Here are a few savvy ways to make investing a more palatable road to follow over a ...Read More

Study by Boston College ties legal complaints about retirement plans to a growing demand for index ...Read More

Financial literacy program focuses on helping investors learn in an objective, pitch-free ...Read More

Business owners and entrepreneurs do have alternatives to help build their retirement nest eggs at ...Read More

The CNBC stock picker has become a vocal advocate for passive mutual funds. Here's his reasoning behind such a ...Read More

Comparing market returns across the 2000s and 2010s reinforces the benefits of diversification and pursuing known drivers of higher expected ...Read More

What has been the value of sticking to a disciplined investment plan, regardless of short-term market ...Read More

How to use momentum to your advantage, and to avoid any nast ...Read More

'Shock and awe' reactions by stock investors when bond yields flip-flop just don't add up, according to leading ...Read More

As we have pointed out on many occasions, both stock picking and hiring an active manager to pick stocks on your behalf are mug’s games. While some investors diligently study individual stocks and other investors handsomely pay active managers to deliver alpha (an ...Read More

It is important for investors to rebalance their portfolio to achieve risk control and maintain long-term investing ...Read More

Here are some things to keep in-mind when designating a primary and contingent beneficiary in the event both of you perish ...Read More

In 1932, Alfred Cowles established the Cowles Commission for Research in Economics with the motto, "Science is ...Read More

An additional way that a passive advisor can add value is not just asset allocation but asset location. Specifically, for a client that has a mixture of taxable accounts, traditional IRAs, and Roth IRAs, it is often helpful to construct a single portfolio consisting of multiple ...Read More

At Index Fund Advisors, we have repeatedly cautioned investors to avoid getting ensnared in the never-ending pursuit of alpha by either picking stocks or hiring an active manager to pick stocks on their behalf. Nevertheless, by engaging in a few prudent practices such as ...Read More

Initial public offerings often attract media and investor attention. New Dimensional research reveals some of the challenges IPO investors ...Read More

How do funds using such an alternative benchmarking methodology fare when put under IFA's research ...Read More

Vanguard's known as a low-cost indexing pioneer. But how has it done as an active manager?
                                          ...Read More

After logging strong returns in the opening three months of 2019, global equity markets slowed in the second ...Read More

As a fiduciary for its clients, IFA only receives compensation from its clients and is therefore unbiased in its choice of ...Read More

Here's why our investment committee remains intrigued by the unique portfolio designs of Dimensional Fund ...Read More

Stocks, Bonds, Bills, and Inflation (SBBI) is often characterized as the Almanac of returns data. This magisterial work originally produced by Roger Ibbotson and Rex Sinquefield is considered the go to place when information is needed on the expected returns and risks of a ...Read More

IFA is often in the position of accommodating regular cash withdrawal by its clients. The question is how to best generate cash for ...Read More

Financial advice is a prescription that guides investors to make decisions that best serve their ...Read More

The warnings about potential dangers of trying to file your own tax forms are well-documented. Indeed, we've explored at IFA Taxes many of the biggest blunders taxpayers have made in the past working on even the most basic of IRS accounting ...Read More

A lack of consistency by active fund managers in beating their respective benchmarks has been a constant theme of research over the years from the S&P Indices Versus Active (SPIVA) ...Read More

Manager selection is a process that requires analyzing noisy performance data, so it should lean heavily on the notion of statistical ...Read More

Giving investment advice should always aim to meet investors at their level of understanding. We do not expect everyone to have a PhD in Economics, so it is important to focus on big ideas that are the most crucial to understand. This can include ideas such as diversification, ...Read More

As an investment fiduciary, Index Fund Advisors uses two key pieces of correspondence to keep clients informed about their ...Read More

What is the best way to describe the distribution of stock market returns—a normal distribution, lognormal, or something ...Read More

In a recent Financial Professional Outlook, Russell Investments surveyed 234 financial advisors across 145 investment firms nationwide. According to their results, 60% of advisors said that more than half of their clients are near or in ...Read More

Academics are a hallmark of the investment strategy that we recommend to our clients. While there are plenty of sales pitches professing some sort of new or “hot” idea on how to get rich quick, we rely on peer-reviewed academic research to guide the decisions that we ...Read More

Active management is the art of stock picking and market timing. Passive management refers to a buy-and-hold approach to money management. It can be applied to any asset class: big stocks, small stocks, value or growth, foreign or domestic can all be accessed by passive ...Read More

Two different sets of recent research raise concerns about illiquidity issues related to such alternative ...Read More

Investment opportunities exist all around the ...Read More

Figuring out a good Social Security benefits strategy can be a confusing and complex challenge. Here's how IFA can ...Read More

If you have ever spent any time in a casino, it is likely that you have seen supposedly random events that appeared to be non-random. Perhaps the roulette wheel came up red seven times in a row, for example. If your reaction was to place a large bet on ...Read More

Passive domestic funds assets have pulled even. Morningstar sees such funds soon overtaking their active ...Read More

The work and research of Monty Roberts raises parallels to how humans must manage their behavior during times of market ...Read More

In calculating the t-stat, the first step is to determine the excess returns the manager earned above an appropriate ...Read More

When constructing or evaluating a domestic equity portfolio, Index Fund Advisors has traditionally utilized the three-factor asset pricing model that Professors Eugene Fama and Ken French introduced1 in 1993. This model states that the expected return of a broadly diversified ...Read More

Building on SPIVA research, analysts dig into how persistent active managers are in beating their benchmarks over ...Read More

The latest research by Dimensional underscores the problems associated with trying to invest in active funds over ...Read More

Long-term minded investors shouldn't be surprised. Traders, however, could've been whipsawed by markets in ...Read More

Over the last several years, index funds have received increased attention from investors and the financial media. Some have even made claims that the increased usage of index funds may be distorting market prices. For many, this argument hinges on the premise that indexing ...Read More