Articles

Over the Hedge

Stock market declines tend to trigger discussions of hedging by clients and in the financial press.  Often the media presents hedging as a viable way for investors to protect their portfolios, which very rarely is the case. Hedging a portfolio simply means reducing equity exposure. 

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Sector Scramble

On September 21, the largest reorganization of GICS Industry Sector classification will take place. GICS – the Global Industry Classification Standard – is a joint venture between Standard & Poor’s and MSCI that defines sectors and industries and classifies individual stocks to them. The impetus

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Crypto is not dead, it just smells funny

Paraphrasing from the classic Frank Zappa quote about Jazz, it has been a tough year for cryptocurrencies.  Bitcoin has shed over two thirds of its value after reaching a peak price of $19K last year.  Other cryptocurrencies, such as Etherium, suffered even worse losses.  However,

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A Green Light for MLPs?

Yesterday, August 2, Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) announced an expected consolidation with its general partner, Energy Transfer Equity (ETE). Energy Transfer was the largest remaining MLP that had not eliminated its general partner and the associated Incentive Distribution Rights (IDRs). IDRs give ETE, the general

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Poster Child for the ETF Revolution

While the record flows of investor capital into index funds and ETFs provided good returns during the bull market of the past few years, we remain concerned that much of the outperformance of passive strategies vs active managers was driven by fund flows into these

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Not nearly as bad as we feared

Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked. – Warren Buffett Over the past few quarters, we have expressed concern that this multi-year period of low volatility had created the potential for a structurally driven market decline analogous to those

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