Archive for the ‘Security Selection & Market Timing’ Category
How investors lost money: evidence from mutual fund flows
Posted by: Michael Zhuang on: July 30, 2009
Investors don’t need outside help to hurt themselves. I’ve been writing about how ignoring conflict of interest, hidden fees, and not taking the necessary time to do due diligence costs investors a great deal of money. Today, I’m going to show you another way they self-inflict pain, and what to do about it. Let’s imagine [...]
Reading tea leaves from Harvard’s portfolio changes
Posted by: Michael Zhuang on: May 20, 2009
The Harvard Management Company, which oversees the $26 billion Harvard University Endowment, recently filed a 13F-HR quarterly report with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosing its portfolio of publicly traded securities as of the end of Q1 2009. Here are the most significant changes to Harvard’s portfolio: Three dropouts IShares MSCI UK Index Fund, [...]
Lessons from Harvard’s timely bet on emerging markets
Posted by: Michael Zhuang on: May 7, 2009
During the last quarter of 2008, the Harvard University Endowment quietly overhauled its public equity investment portfolio. By the end of the overhaul, the top 10 positions in the portfolio looked like this: Chart credit: Paul Kedrosky Most strikingly, seven out of the top 10 are emerging-market exchange trading funds (ETFs), with emerging-market index fund [...]
The complete list of Chinese ADRs (with Piotroski ranking)
Posted by: Michael Zhuang on: April 22, 2009
The following link contains the complete list of Chinese ADRs with fundamental scores calculated based on Piotroski’s methodology. Chinese ADRs listed in OTC markets not having financial statements are omitted. For more information about Piotroski’s methodology please read his research paper – “Value Investing: The Use of Historical Finanical Statement Information to Separate Winners from [...]
Checking Jim Cramer’s 2008 Top Ten predictions
Posted by: Michael Zhuang on: March 14, 2009
Jim Cramer: “Watch TV, Get Rich!” If you watch his show, you certainly would not forget the Top Ten predictions he made in January 2nd, 2008. Now that we are well into 2009, it’s about time to check the accuracy of his predictions. On Goldman Sachs (GS) Goldman Sachs (GS) makes more money than every [...]
A David Swensen lecture on asset allocation, security selection and market timing
Posted by: Michael Zhuang on: February 3, 2009
David Swensen, Yale’s Chief Investment Officer and manager of the University’s endowment, discusses the tactics and tools that Yale and other endowments use to create long-term, positive investment returns. He emphasizes the importance of asset allocation and diversification and the limited effects of market timing and security selection.
Is P/E ratio a useful stock valuation measure?
Posted by: Michael Zhuang on: July 9, 2008
Warren Buffet said: “Price is what you pay and value is what you get.” Wall Street uses the price-to-earning ratio, or the P/E ratio in short, to determine whether one gets what one pays for when buying a stock. Is this ratio just a myth? Or is it a useful valuation measure? To answer this [...]
Market Sentiment and Stock Returns
Posted by: Michael Zhuang on: July 31, 2007
Someone asked:”Do you know of any researches/studies carried out that help predict possible upward/downward movements of equity markets?” The following is my answer. Investors are driven to a large extent by greed and fear, and usually they are driven to the wrong directions. Warren Buffet once said:”Be fearful when everyone else is greedy; and be [...]
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