Category: Investing
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Is the Lifecycle Model Dead? New Research on Optimal Retirement Asset Allocation
Recently, I’ve been exploring optimal retirement asset allocations. Conventional wisdom suggests that savers should invest more conservatively as they approach retirement. The lifecycle model of investing, for example, posits that an individual’s investment strategy should change over their lifetime based on their age, financial goals, risk tolerance, and time horizon. During accumulation, investors typically have…
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Don’t Panic!
Equity investing can be gut wrenching. Looking at the exchange value of your investment during a market panic or after a decade or more of lost returns is enough to challenge even the most dedicated investors. Karl Marx marveled at the way “fictitious capital” could bear almost no relationship to the intrinsic value of the…
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The Stock Market’s Longest Losing Streak
I was recently working on an asset-liability matching exercise for my financial plan. Asset-liability matching is exactly what it sounds like: a financial strategy where you match your investment assets (stocks, bonds and cash) with your liabilities (debts and spending). The core idea is to match the timing of cash needs with asset liquidation or…
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Beyond the Green Veil: An ESG Postmortem | Part 3
In the previous two posts, we explored how ESG became a worldwide phenomenon, how it courted political controversy and generated critique from politicians, armchair economists and academic journals. In this final post, we’ll explore some deeper critiques through the lens of Marxist economics and offer some potential social democratic and market socialist alternatives to ESG…
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Beyond the Green Veil: An ESG Postmortem | Part 2
Welcome to the second of three blog posts about the rise and fall of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investing. Last week, we discussed the history of ESG investing along with made by proponents of ESG. This week we’ll discuss some of the popular critiques of ESG and their more academic equivalents. Let’s jump in…
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Beyond the Green Veil: An ESG Postmortem | Part 1
Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investing emerged as a purportedly transformative force in the financial world, growing at a breakneck pace until very recently. It promised a pathway to align the often-disparate goals of generating superior financial returns with achieving broader environmental and social objectives. This burgeoning asset category, encompassing a wide and evolving array…
Fictitious Capitalist 