What Went Wrong in Managing Risk and How Can We Do Better?
This is a summary of a session from the FRA’s Performance & Risk Measurement Symposium that was held in Boston on April 23-24, 2009. Speaking in this session was James E. Hollis, CFA, Managing Director of Cutter Associates. Jim provided a well-researched overview of the recent financial crisis as well as some tangential, but interesting […]
Financial Crisis Failures and Improving Risk Management
This is a summary of a session from the FRA’s Performance & Risk Measurement Symposium that was held in Boston on April 23-24, 2009. Speaking in this session was James E. Hollis, CFA, Managing Director of Cutter Associates. Jim provided a well-researched overview of the recent financial crisis as well as some tangential, but interesting […]
Going Beyond the Fundamentals of Benchmarks and Getting it Right!
This is a summary of a session from the FRA’s Performance & Risk Measurement Symposium that was held in Boston on April 23-24, 2009. Speaking in this session was Ronald J Surz, President & CEO of PPCA, Inc. Ron is a pension consulting veteran, having started with A.G. Becker in the 1970’s. He earned an […]
Proposed Changes to GIPS Standards
Last Thursday and Friday, I attended the Financial Research Association’s Symposium on Performance and Risk Measurement in Boston. There were a lot of informative sessions and I took almost ten pages of notes, so I should have enough material for a bunch of posts. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to travel on Wednesday evening, so by […]
Defining Tax Management
In the most recent edition of my Managed Accounts Newsletter (MA Monitor, Feb 2009), I compared different recommendations of the minimum value for a managed account that is required in order for tax management to be effective. The values ranged from $0 (no minimum) up to $1,000,000: $1,000,000 — Dale Rottschafer, CIO, Metamorphosis Money Management […]
A Conversation with Randy Bullard
Last week I had the opportunity to speak with Randy Bullard, Founder and EVP of Business Development at Placemark Investments. I planned to ask him a series of detailed questions about his company’s tax management and optimization services. Here is the list of topics I wanted to cover: Tax Aware Transition of Pre-Existing Securities Tax […]
Generating Tax Alpha With After-Tax Asset Allocation
The calculation of after-tax asset allocation is key to determining asset location, which can significantly impact an investor’s after-tax returns according to a study done by William Reichenstein, Ph.D., CFA (a copy is here as well). Reichenstein proposes a unified framework that addresses the different risks and returns that exist between taxable and retirement accounts. While he doesn’t mention the […]
Seeking Tax Alpha
The term “tax alpha,” which was coined by Rob Arnott of investment manager Research Affiliates, represents the improvement in net returns gained from effective tax management. (from Seeking Tax Alpha By David E. Adler at AdvisorMax.com) During my research and discussions with industry professionals, I’ve discovered (not surprisingly) that there are many definitions of tax […]
Is Tax Alpha a Myth or is it Real?
This blog is dedicated to a tax management as it relates to fee-based managed accounts. I plan on researching and discussing many of the issues surrounding tax management. I’ll look into tax management claims made by investment advisors, overlay managers and software companies. Different methodologies of tax management are also on my radar as well […]