Insights

ABR Series on Portfolio Construction

Part 1: The Markowitz Contradiction
Part 2: Fooled by the Wrapper I: Many long/short alternative strategies are just expensive beta
Part 3: Performance rankings have generally proven worthless
Part 4: Measuring and budgeting risk
Part 5: Fooled by the Wrapper II: Your “Market Neutral” alternative may be just SPY and TLT
Part 6: Expenses should be risk-adjusted, just like returns
Part 7: If you are properly diversified, you will always hate at least one of your investments
Part 8: Fooled by the Wrapper III: Real estate has behaved a lot like the equity market
Part 9: The Active vs. Passive debate is a red herring
Part 10: Timing capital gains taxes is the same as timing the market
Part 11: Fooled by the Wrapper IV: Option collar overlay strategies may be worse than just selling stock
Part 12: Fooled by the Wrapper V: Private Equity and Direct Lending have mostly just been Leveraged Stocks and Bonds
Part 13: How a low beta can mask a high correlation
Part 14: Fooled by the Wrapper VI: Convertible bonds have mostly just provided core exposure
Part 15: Everyone is a long-term investor, until volatility hits
Part 16: The discretionary vs. systematic debate
Part 17: Fooled by the Wrapper VII: Many long/short credit strategies have effectively just been long-only bond allocations
Part 18: Superficial diversification may hide concentrated equity bets
Part 19: Maximizing reward for every dollar put at risk
Part 20: The Value of Alternative Investments
Part 21: Leverage has been a poor measure of risk but a useful tool for setting risk
Part 22: Garbage in, garbage out
Part 23: Alpha and various other MPT stats are often used to rationalize performance chasing
Part 24: Results, Rebuttals, and Closing Summary