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Comparing DFA Small Value to Vanguard Small Value

Over the past few months, the difference in historical performance between DFA Small Value (ticker: DFSVX) and Vanguard Small Value (VISVX) has narrowed. For example, for the 10-year period ending December 2014, the compound annual return of DFSVX was 7.9 percent while VISVX earned 8.3 percent. Comparatively, for the 10-year period ending December 2012, compound…

Deflation and Stock and Bond Returns

Overview: With expected inflation rates very low, there will be significant attention on the possibility of deflation causing the stock market to fall. This blog examines the relationship between the rate of inflation and stock and bond returns. Generally, the research shows that stock returns are no lower in deflationary environments than in normal inflationary…

An Analytical Evaluation of Rising Glidepath Claims

Last year, a piece by Michael Kitces and Wade Pfau made the claim that mechanically increasing the equity allocation during retirement — which they term a “rising glidepath” — could reduce the likelihood that a retiree outlives his or her assets and could decrease the magnitude of shortfall when capital market returns disappoint. Specifically, the…

Resurrecting the Size Premium

There have been a number of articles over the past few years claiming to refute the existence of a small-cap (or size) premium, which is the historical difference in returns between small-cap stocks and large-cap stocks. While the critiques have been somewhat varied, two common claims are that the risk-adjusted returns of small-cap stocks have…

Are Some Bond Fund Prices Stale?

I have long been skeptical of how fair bond fund prices are — or more accurately said, the potential ability for knowledgeable investors to “game” bond fund prices — in fixed income asset classes where liquidity isn’t great. Two asset classes that immediately come to mind are municipal bonds and high-yield corporate bonds. I finally…

Perspective on High-Frequency Trading

I have received a number of questions since “60 Minutes” ran a piece on high-frequency trading (HFT)on March 30 (lest we forget, this is the same “60 Minutes” that ran a piece in 2010 that predicted the municipal market would implode in 2011, and we all know how that turned out). I’ll summarize what I think…

Do Corporate Bonds Add Value in Portfolios

I frequently get asked about the merits of corporate bonds, both investment-grade (IG) and high-yield (HY), relative to government and municipal bonds. I don’t believe the risk-return profile for long-term investors (particularly taxable individual investors) is improved by owning IG or HY corporate bonds compared with simply owning a diversified portfolio of stocks and high-quality…