Why Gold's Inflation Hedge Fails in a Crisis
Gold is widely marketed as an inflation hedge, but 126 years of data show it falters when inflation exceeds 3%. In the February 2026 Iran‑related oil shock, gold briefly spiked to $5,400/oz before falling 10‑12% as higher rates eroded its appeal. The Dimson‑Marsh‑Staunton dataset records an annualised real return of only 1.3% for gold, far below equities and bonds. Researchers attribute the breakdown to rising real rates, volatility, and a post‑1998 structural shift.
Why Policy Uncertainty Is a Terrible Guide to Investing
Policy uncertainty, measured by the Economic Policy Uncertainty Index, has surged to near‑record levels amid geopolitical tensions, yet the market‑risk gauge VIX remains only modestly elevated. Academic research shows the two metrics are weakly correlated (0.58) and often diverge, meaning...
Are Government Bonds Really Safe?
Three centuries of UK and US government bond data reveal that bonds are safe in recessions but vulnerable during wars, pandemics and geopolitical shocks. Recent events have pushed 10‑year UK gilt yields to 5.07%, the highest since 2008, and a...
100 Years, 29,000 Stocks, 46 Winners: The Case for Indexing Just Got Stronger
A new century‑long study by Hendrik Bessembinder shows that just 46 out of nearly 30,000 U.S. stocks accounted for half of $91 trillion in shareholder wealth creation, down from 89 firms in his 2018 analysis. The median stock delivered a -6.9%...
How Much of Your Portfolio Should Be in Stocks?
A new Yale working paper challenges the ubiquitous “100‑minus‑your‑age” rule for equity allocation, showing it costs investors about 2 % of lifetime consumption compared with the true optimum. The research treats future salary as human capital—a bond‑like asset that dramatically shifts...
The Hidden Cost of Trading in Retirement
A 2025 working paper tracking 59,105 Swedish investors shows that after retirement trading frequency rises by about 7.7% and portfolio holdings increase 8.2%, yet risk‑adjusted returns (Carhart alpha) fall roughly 0.6 percentage points. The same pattern mirrors the UK, where...
Does AI Accentuate Investor Biases?
Investors are rapidly adopting AI tools for research and decision support, hoping the technology will eliminate emotional bias. Two recent studies, one from the CFA Institute and another by Bini et al., find the opposite: AI mirrors investor biases, especially attention...
Your Fund Family Has Outperformed? Yeah, Right
The FT Alphaville piece exposes how active fund families, exemplified by Capital Group, cherry‑pick start dates, benchmarks, and gross‑of‑fees figures to make outperformance claims look better than they are. While Capital Group touts a 91% inception‑to‑2025 beat rate, net‑of‑fees numbers...
Scott Adams: Cartoonist, Divisive Commentator, Scourge of Active Managers
Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, used his globally‑read comic strip to launch a sustained critique of active fund management, portraying it as a costly scam through the character Dogbert. His personal experience—losing money to a Wells Fargo‑managed portfolio that invested...
Why Expected Returns Matter More than Index Concentration
The S&P 500’s top‑seven stocks now represent more than 30% of market value, sparking industry warnings about concentration risk. Academic research shows this level mirrors historic peaks from the 1930s and is a natural outcome of firm‑specific volatility, not a market...
S&P 500 Concentration: The Scare Story That's Costing Investors Money
New research by Mark Kritzman and David Turkington shows that despite recent headlines about the S&P 500’s rising concentration, the index’s current concentration is within historical norms. Using almost a century of data, they find that strategies that reduced equity exposure...
