At The Money: Andrew Slimmon on Closet Indexing  (April 17, 2024) Are your expensive active mutual funds and ETFs actually active? Or, as is too often the case, are they only pretending to be active? Do they charge a high active fee but then behave more like an index fund? If so, you are the victim of closet indexing. We discuss the best ways to avoid the funds that charge high fees but fail to provide the benefits of active management. Full transcript below. ~~~ About this week’s guest: Andrew Slimmon is Managing Director at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, and ..read more

     The transcript from this week’s, MiB: Samara Cohen, CIO, Blackrock ETF & Index Investments, is below. You can stream and download our full conversation, including any podcast extras, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here.     ~~~   Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio News. This is Masters in business with Barry Ritholtz on Bloomberg Radio. Barry Ritholtz: This week on the podcast, I have an extra special guest. Samara Cohen is, wow, what a career. She has Chief In ..read more

Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures: • The Rise Of The Bee Bandits: Where once there was cattle and horse rustling, the American West is now confronting the theft of its bees. (NOEMA) • Why car insurance rates are so high: You’re paying a lot more for car insurance than you were in 2020. Here’s why. (Vox) see also Insurers Are Spying on Your Home From the Sky: Companies are using drones to check out roofs or to spot yard debris and undeclared trampolines. (Wall Street Journal) • As Kushner’s Investment Firm Steps Out, the Potential ..read more

  I wanted to share a few thoughts about the new podcast we formally launched in December of last year, At the Money. The idea behind the show: Short, focused conversations with experts about any and all issues that affect you and your money, from spending it to investing it. Think of it as a guided tour of key ideas, sherpaed with the experts who I believe add enormous value to our understanding of how humans do behave — and should behave — around money. By short, I mean 10-minutes (15 tops) or a 1,000-2,000 word transcript that takes even less time to read. Currently, it’s part of the ..read more

The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of  coffee, grab a seat outside, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads: • This is the most consequential technology in America: (Spoiler alert: It’s YouTube.) It’s the most popular social app and music service, the healthiest economy on the internet and AI training fuel. (Washington Post) • What I Learned from Daniel Kahneman. What’s the best way to get better investment returns? Should you study markets more deeply and analyze every asset more carefully? Should you try to anticipate other people’s mistakes and exploit their stupidit ..read more

     This week, we speak with Samara Cohen, senior managing director at BlackRock, and chief investment officer of the firm’s ETF & Index Investments, running about $6.6 trillion in client assets. She is also a member of BlackRock’s Global Executive Committee and its investment and talent subcommittees. Cohen is also the Global Executive Committee’s sponsor for BlackRock’s Women’s Initiative & Allies Network and a member of the Global Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Steering Committee. She was previously a managing director in the securities division of Goldman Sachs Group I ..read more

    Confused about where we are today? A favorite exercise is to go back to first principles to consider how we got to where we are. (That is a favorite way to find fresh insights). On the equity side, you have to go back a century or so. Equities were considered speculative endeavors, best suited for gamblers and punters. The exceptions? A handful of “Widows & Orphan” stocks, like Ma Bell, some railroads, utilities and the rare bank that was not suffering regular runs. There were no disclosure rules, insider trading was rampant, and market manipulation the norm. Trading syndica ..read more

    At the Money: Staying the Course (April 10, 2024) Markets go up and down as news breaks, companies miss earnings estimates, and economic data disappoints. It’s not too hard to see why staying the course can be a challenge for investors. Full transcript below. ~~~ About this week’s guest: Larry Swedroe is Head of Financial and Economic Research at Buckingham Strategic Wealth. The firm manages or advises on $70 Billion in client assets. Swedroe has written or co-written 20 books on investing. For more info, see: Personal Bio Professional website LinkedIn Twitter ~~~   Find all ..read more

    Between book leave and COVID I have been pretty quiet lately. Since it’s been a few months, I thought we could take a quick look at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s State Coincident Indicators out for both January and February 2024.1 As the charts above show, the economy on a state-by-state basis has markedly improved from Q4 2023’s softening. I would go as far as to suggest it is robust. In January, the 3-month average of “the indexes increased in 49 states and decreased in one state, for a three-month diffusion index of 96.”  In February, the 3-month averag ..read more

  The transcript from this week’s, MiB: Ed Hyman on Using Economic Data Opportunistically, is below. You can stream and download our full conversation, including any podcast extras, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here. ~~~ This is Masters in business with Barry Ritholtz on Bloomberg Radio Barry Ritholtz: This weekend on the podcast, ed Hyman returns to talk about all things economic analysis, what’s going on in the world, how he’s built an incredible career, oh my God, 43 times number one ranked ..read more