Opinion
Volatility is genuine risk because it induces investors to abandon their plans
“The smartest of the smart guys say that volatility is not risk. And I strongly, strongly disagree. Because if you're, what you're really trying to do is achieve your goals in life, and the more volatile an investment is, Makes it more likely that you're going …”
Opinion
Investors do not earn a complexity premium for intricate investment strategies
“I would argue that there's not a complexity premium for investors.”
Insight
Portnoy: Investing success means meeting client expectations, not beating benchmarks
“What I concluded after putting a lot of thought and time into it over a couple years was that true success in investing, broadly defined, is when expectations Map up with outcomes. And I began to realize, not in its fullest fruition, in the second book I explo…”
Insight
Portnoy: Complex investment strategies are most likely to disappoint
“The more complex a strategy, the more moving pieces it has, the harder it is to set expectations. So, precisely the funds that we think are positioned, To do the best for us during complex times are probably the ones best positioned to disappoint us.”
Opinion
Institutional allocators excel at creating confusion and solving non-existent problems
“I would say on the institutional side, allocators are very good at creating confusion and problems that don't exist.”
Insight
Portnoy: Complexity benefits professionals' careers in asset management
“Complexity is a good thing for people's careers in our industry.”
Opinion
Portnoy: Vast majority of money managers refuse to accept luck plays a role
“It drives me crazy that I would say a vast majority of money managers I've met over the years, and it's a big number, simply will not accept that luck is part of the equation.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Portnoy: Institutional hedge fund wave began after 2000-2002 drawdown
“The big institutional wave into hedge funds began after the 2000 to 2002 drawdown because so many funds, as we've talked about for a long time, were prescient enough or smart enough to be long value and short growth, and they survived 99, and they put up absol…”
Insight
Evaluating allocator skill requires tracking the performance of passed investment opportunities
“Well, you can't really say whether you're skilled or not if, unless you think about the 99 that you passed on and whether they worked out on an absolute basis and relative to the one decision that you did make.”
Insight
Bundling educational content with commoditized products is the modern wealth management recipe
“As so much product has become commoditized and it's less of an edge, the ability to bundle content with very compelling product is, is sort of the recipe. And so we think about how do you generate mindshare before generating market share.”
Insight
True wealth is funded contentment, whereas being rich is a hedonic treadmill
“Wealthy is funded contentment. Rich is the quest for more. And I could cite you a 1001 articles from social psychology and other disciplines that show that the quest for more is nothing better than a treadmill.”
Assertion Supported
Portnoy: Wealth management shifted from brokerage to financial plans only recently
“It wasn't that long ago that the advice business was really a brokerage business. It was selling stocks and bonds and funds for a nice fee. It's only over the last five, 10, 15 years that the bulk of the wealth management industry has bought into this idea tha…”
Insight
Portnoy: Working with advisors improves outcomes through behavioral coaching
“That's why I think generally people who work with financial advisors tend to have much better outcomes, not because the advisor is a market guru, but because the advisor can be a coach.”
Assertion Supported
Portnoy: Target date and defined contribution funds produce better behavioral outcomes
“We know that people who are in target date funds And who are in sort of the institutional or defined contribution share classes of big funds tend to have better behavioral outcomes than those who are in the daily discretionary versions of the exact same funds.”
Insight
Portnoy: Success comes from sourcing cheap options, not swinging for home runs
“The idea that much of success is, is not about pointing to the fences and hitting that one home run and walking off the field. It's more about having lots and lots of iterations across multiple games in your life where you're trying to source as many cheap opt…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Portnoy: Morningstar's Don Phillips invented the field of manager research
“Don Phillips, who really invented the field of manager research, you know, I think he has a master's degree in literature from the University of Texas.”
Assertion Supported
Portnoy: ETF count grew from 50 in 1999 to 4,000-5,000
“There's now four or 5000 ETFs. There were only 50 in 1999.”
