Articles (1,565)

As we come to the end of the year it is important to reflect on some of the lessons learned from 2016. One of the biggest that comes to mind is the importance of discipline when it comes to investing, especially if you are trying to target specific risk ...Read More

As an investor it is important to understand the value your advisor provides for the fee they are charging you. While many traditional financial firms believe the majority of their value comes in the form of an actively managed investment portfolio attempting to outperform a ...Read More

New York based money manager, Alliance Bernstein, has built a reputation of being one of the leading investment experts. They currently manage $490 Billion in assets, have 47 locations across 21 different countries, have close to 3,500 employees, and is currently traded on the ...Read More

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

Hedge funds have received a pretty bad wrap since the last financial crisis. Some of the big stories that involved illegal behavior on behalf of hedge funds include Dreier LLP, Weavering Capital, Capitol Investments USA, Westgate Capital Management, Petters Group Worldwide, ...Read More

Saving for retirement, let alone saving enough for a retirement, is a difficult endeavor for most investors. With the majority of baby boomers being underfunded for retirement, the overall conclusion that investors having enough knowledge, resources, and will power to prepare ...Read More

At about the same time last year we saw the Federal Reserve raise the Federal Funds Rate by 0.25%. In anticipation to the Fed’s announcement, investors took to the markets to try and get ahead in terms of positioning themselves for the change. We wrote an article covering ...Read More

The Wall Street Journal recently published a series of articles under the title “The Passivists.” Highlighting the merits of a passive investment approach, authors tackle topics such as the fruitless endeavor of trying to pick winning stocks to the “Do Nothing ...Read More

The Wall Street Journal recently published a series of articles under the title “The Passivists.” Highlighting the merits of a passive investment approach, authors tackle topics such as the fruitless endeavor of trying to pick winning stocks to the “Do Nothing ...Read More

The Wall Street Journal recently published a series of articles under the title “The Passivists.” Highlighting the merits of a passive investment approach, authors tackle topics such as the fruitless endeavor of trying to pick winning stocks to the “Do Nothing ...Read More

Boston based money manager, Putnam Investments, has fallen on some hard times. As reported in the Boston Globe article, on Tuesday the company announced that it is going to cut 115 jobs or about 8% of its workforce given the continued outflow of assets from their firm. Currently ...Read More

“You make more money selling advice than following it. It’s one of those things we count on in the magazine business—along with the short term memory of our readers.” – Steve Forbes, publisher of Forbes Magazine It is officially that time of the ...Read More

The Wall Street Journal recently published a series of articles under the title “The Passivists.” Highlighting the merits of a passive investment approach, authors tackle topics such as the fruitless endeavor of trying to pick winning stocks to the “Do Nothing ...Read More

While we believe there are many reasons why investors should look into adopting a passive investment strategy that incorporates buying, holding, and rebalancing a globally diversified portfolio of index funds, here are ten.  1. Markets Are Random: Markets are moved by news ...Read More

Diversification provides many benefits for investors. Not only can we increase expected returns for a given level of risk, but we can also increase the reliability of capturing premiums or “dimensions” of expected return. In other words, once we decide that we want ...Read More

At Index Fund Advisors, it is standard operating procedure for us to tailor how we manage client portfolios at year-end in anticipation of dividend and capital gains distributions from the mutual funds that we ...Read More

It may come as no surprise to anyone who follows us, but just in case you forgot, we don’t think too highly of active management. It is nothing personal, of course. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority is not delivering on their proposed value proposition to ...Read More

The Wall Street Journal recently published a series of articles under the title “The Passivists.” Highlighting the merits of a passive investment approach, authors tackle topics such as the fruitless endeavor of trying to pick winning stocks to the “Do Nothing ...Read More

Over the last few years we have seen an increase in the number of lawsuits bringing brought against employers for conflicts revolving in and around the retirement plans they provide for their employees. One of the most recent headlines involves New York based money manager, ...Read More

The Wall Street Journal recently published a series of articles under the title “The Passivists.” Highlighting the merits of a passive investment approach, authors tackle topics such as the fruitless endeavor of trying to pick winning stocks to the “Do Nothing ...Read More

Most of us woke up this morning with a certain amount of uncertainty hanging over our heads. Similar to what we witnessed during the “Brexit” vote just five month earlier, polls, statisticians, and markets didn’t expect the outcome of this election. As some ...Read More

The Wall Street Journal recently published a series of articles under the title “The Passivists.” Highlighting the merits of a passive investment approach, authors tackle topics such as the fruitless endeavor of trying to pick winning stocks to the “Do Nothing ...Read More

The Wall Street Journal recently published a series of articles under the title “The Passivists.” Highlighting the merits of a passive investment approach, authors tackle topics such as the fruitless endeavor of trying to pick winning stocks to the “Do Nothing ...Read More

“The more things change, the more they stay the same.” – Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr   We have all said it before. Whether it comes to our finances or any other situation that involves what seems like a high degree of uncertainty, we are all predisposed to ...Read More

“Why?” It’s the question that our children often use and abuse to the point of our own mental and emotional capacity. While we end up resorting to the very popular choice of last resort -“cause I said so” – I often appreciate curiosity and ...Read More

In 1958, economist Leonard Read published an essay entitled “I, Pencil: My Family Tree as Told to Leonard E. Read.” The essay, narrated from the point of view of a pencil, describes the “complex combination of miracles” necessary to create and bring to ...Read More

It has become a tradition that we reflect on the prior year by collecting our IFA statistics (or, what has grown to be known as IFA By the Numbers) on the abundance and wealth of information we provide in dedication towards replacing speculation with an ...Read More

Fiduciary: one often in a position of authority who obligates himself or herself to act on behalf of another and assumes a duty to act in good faith and with care, candor, and loyalty in fulfilling the obligation[1] It should go without saying that the financial services ...Read More

We recently came across a survey from the asset manager Blackrock that reported the vast majority of investors are fleeing to cash ahead of this year’s general election. Specifically, “three-quarters of Americans believe the election will have a bigger impact on ...Read More

“Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, But Not Simpler” – Albert Einstein The role of a Wealth Advisor is constantly evolving. Most of our parents remember the days where the majority of “advisors” were simply stockbrokers who earned ...Read More

The 3rd Quarter of 2016 was a great example of the disconnect between markets and economies that many often believe are closely tied together. While economic indicators are extremely important in terms of the market’s anticipation of long term growth, the two do not ...Read More

Many investors have caught on to the idea of the different dimensions of expected return or “premiums” such as the market, size, relative price (value), profitability, and capital investment factors. We at IFA have long advocated for a passive investment strategy ...Read More

Next month, Americans will head to the polls to elect the next president of the United States. While the outcome is unknown, one thing is for certain: There will be a steady stream of opinions from pundits and prognosticators about how the election will impact the stock market. ...Read More

How much can one afford in retirement? It is the holy grail of retirement planning and has been through multiples evolutions over the last few decades. Why? In short, we are trying to give a solution based on uncertainty about the future. What are returns going to be like ...Read More

Index Fund Advisors embraces the responsibility of putting our clients’ best interest first and foremost.  Being beholden to the fiduciary standard of care is not something we see as a barrier, but as a universal standard that should be applied to anyone who engages ...Read More

Research over the last 4 decades has revealed a robust and persistent value premium – value stocks have outperformed growth stocks over many time periods and markets worldwide. In its most simplest form, value stocks can be defined as having discounted prices based on some ...Read More

Lawsuits and retirement plans have become quite the pair in recent years. Plan participants have become aware of the excessive fees and conflict of interest that have plagued the retirement industry—and most are still not even close in terms of being fully financed for ...Read More

Jack Dreyfus, also known as “The Lion of Wall Street,” founded Dreyfus Funds in New York City in 1951. A 1964 Life Magazine article attributes Dreyfus as revolutionizing the advertising of mutual funds, which were largely a part of institutional investing (i.e. ...Read More

Bill Miller is widely considered one of the most successful investors of all time. At the helm of the Legg Mason Value Trust Fund (LMVTX) for over three decades, he earned the title of legendary by beating the S&P 500 for 15 consecutive years from 1991 through 2005. But ...Read More

A recent article was published on MarketWatch whose provocative title made our eyebrows rise with curiosity. The title read, “How This Stock Fund Routinely Beats the S&P 500.” Let’s just pause right there for a second. Whether or not the intent of the ...Read More

The active fund industry is a marketing machine; ready to pitch short term outperformance as an indication of manager skill. Investors subsequently make a large allocation to these “winners” and more often than not end up earning less than stellar performance ...Read More

The Bank of New York Mellon, officially, has only been in existence since 2007 from a merger, but its roots span all the way back to the birth of our nation. The Bank of New York was founded 232 years ago by the first US Secretary of the Treasury, ...Read More

On January 1, 2013, the US Government introduced a new Net Investment Income Tax of 3.8%. This tax only affects certain households or individuals that meet certain thresholds of net investment income or modified adjusted gross income ...Read More

I am very proud to share this film with you and ask that you help spread the word. I’d also like to thank you for your support, your interest and your encouragement as my dedicated team and I continue to press on in our mission to change the way the world invests—by ...Read More

Columbia Management is one of the largest investment management firms in the world. With close to 7 full decades of industry experience and expertise and over 100 individual investment strategies, Columbia has become a staple within the fund industry. As of year-end 2015, their ...Read More

The second quarter of 2016 was mixed in terms of good and bad news as well as performance. While the Eurozone experienced a big shock in terms of the unanticipated “Brexit” vote, the United States experienced falling jobless claims, increasing in consumer prices, and ...Read More

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” – Albert Einstein Market timing is and has been one of the most disastrous investment ideas to plague our world. This isn’t due to some natural absolute law like ...Read More

There are some investment advisory firms who believe in the notion that active management can outperform due to the behavioral biases inherent in all investors. For example, Minnesota based Blue Water Capital makes the recommendation to their investors that there may be ...Read More

San Francisco based Dodge & Cox is one of the most well-known investment management firms in the world. More impressively, they have been able to build a very sizeable asset base on the back of just 6 mutual funds. According to Morningstar, total assets under management as ...Read More

Believe it or not, many plan sponsors of institutional investment plans do not have a reliable benchmark to judge their total performance over time.  How can this be?  What could be more fundamental than the ability to accurately evaluate investment results? Although ...Read More

One of the most misunderstood tenants of the efficient market hypothesis (EMH) has to do with assumption that all decisions made by market participants are rational. In other words, the millions of people who are buying and selling securities act as robots where they are ...Read More

On June 23, citizens of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. While there has been much speculation leading up to and since the vote, many of the longer-term implications of the referendum remain unclear, as the process for negotiating what a UK exit may look ...Read More

Public pensions have a very simple purpose: to help serve the many public employees and their retirement. What they have turned into is a shining example of wasting taxpayer money. The Washing Post recently published an article highlighting the $320 million in fees that the ...Read More

In recent years, following a decade-long gorging on hedge and private equity funds by government pensions, the massive hidden fees and expenses related to these "alternative" investment funds have attracted greater scrutiny. Despite initial skepticism, it is now widely ...Read More

A common question we receive from clients has to do with bond strategies. Should we buy bond funds or build individual bond ladders? There are a few things to keep in mind when thinking the role of fixed income from a portfolio standpoint. As an investment advisor, we think ...Read More

As proponents of globally diversified portfolios, we understand the principle of diversification when it comes to investing. Harry Markowitz was one of the first academics to identify the benefits of adding additional assets to a portfolio. In theory, assets with different ...Read More

Vanguard is the largest fund management company in the world. Mostly known for being a pioneer in the development of index funds, they also carry quite a few actively managed funds in their lineup.                      ...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

With the annual reconstitution of the Russell indices approaching, it is a good opportunity to revisit how index reconstitution events affect trading costs and returns. Index funds are an innovative solution for investors that provide diversified investments at low fees. On any ...Read More