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Laurence December 8, 2021 Articles
An urban legend has Amos Tversky, the late co-founder (along with Daniel Kahneman) of behavioral economics, asking a computer scientist what he was working on. The computer man responded, "I study artificial intelligence." Tversky, a notorious smart aleck, responded, "I study natural stupidity." Steven Pinker has studied natural stupidity more carefully than any other living writer. Trained as a cognitive …
Laurence October 6, 2021 Articles
The British journalist Nicholas Wapshott's Samuelson Friedman, a sequel to his earlier Keynes Hayek, promises an exciting Shootout at the OK Corral but doesn't deliver. (The silly book titles don't help either.) Nobel laureates Paul Samuelson, left of center, and Milton Friedman, firmly on the right, had much more in common than not — they were both passionate believers in …
Laurence September 11, 2021 Articles
How Did the World Go from Poor to Rich? After tens of thousands of years of living at a subsistence level, how did the world suddenly become so rich? By "suddenly" I mean in the last 250 years (I'm a long-term investor). However, even if you think in shorter time frames, the rise of China in the last 40 years, …
Interviewed by Kathryn M. Welling Larry Siegel's Highly Contrary, Surprisingly Practical Future Vision There's no getting around it. For all his financial acumen, intellectual firepower and years of experience in trying to meld the minds of Wall Street to scholarly research, Larry Siegel remains both highly rational and a dogged optimist. Amazing. Larry is also a familiar face to faithful …
An urban legend has Amos Tversky, the late co-founder (along with Daniel Kahneman) of behavioral economics,asking a computer scientist what he was working on. The computer man responded, "I study artificial intelligence." Tversky, a notorious smart aleck, responded, "I study natural stupidity." Steven Pinker has studied natural stupidity more carefully than any other living writer. Trained as a cognitive psychologist …
Niall Ferguson Says We're Getting Worse at Dealing with Catastrophes (But He's Wrong)
Laurence August 13, 2021 Articles
Having suffered through the worst pandemic in a century, we are keenly attuned to catastrophe. Few people are better equipped to document the history of catastrophes and our response to them, for better or worse, than Niall Ferguson, the Scottish-American historian and documentary television star whose previous books have covered everything from The Ascent of Money to Colossus: The Rise …
How Did the World Go from Poor to Rich?
After tens of thousands of years of living at a subsistence level, how did the world suddenly become so rich? By "suddenly" I mean in the last 250 years (I'm a long-term investor). However, even if you think in shorter time frames, the rise of China in the last 40 years, and of the United States, Europe, and Japan in …
Is the Endowment Model a Good Investment Strategy?
Laurence July 23, 2021 Articles
4 articles from The Journal of Investing are included in this PDF: COMMENTARY: Problems with the Endowment Model by Richard M. Ennis COMMENTARY: The Endowment Model Is Just Active Management by Laurence B. Siegel REBUTTAL: The Endowment Model Defense That Wasn't by Richard M. Ennis REBUTTAL: The Market Portfolio Is Bigger Than You Think by Laurence B. Siegel
The Asset Allocator: Economic Optimist Larry Siegel Doubts The Doomsayers
Laurence June 3, 2021 Articles
May 11, 2021 7:00 AM ET CLICK ON RADIO TO HEAR PODCAST Summary "Fewer, Richer, Greener," by Laurence B. Siegel, director of research for the CFA Institute Research Foundation, offers a relentlessly optimistic take on the future. In this interview, Siegel cites messenger RNA and the blockchain revolution as contemporary examples of innovation in a real economy he thinks will …
Michael Lewis on the Unlikely Trio That Defeated the Pandemic
The saga of local public health officials tasked with fighting epidemic disease, and their clashes with national health authorities who didn't care, was a perfect recipe for putting readers to sleep. But Michael Lewis made it into high drama. I couldn't put it down. That's about the worst opening for a book review that I can think of, but I …
Financial Folly, Religious Frenzy and the Delusions of Crowds
Laurence May 25, 2021 Articles
What do financial folly and religious frenzy have in common? This question has not been carefully explored since Charles Mackay's spectacular 1852 study, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. But, in a recent book, William Bernstein, a well-known economic historian, neurologist, and investment manager, makes the connection even more strongly than Mackay did. The title of his book, …
Don't Give Up the Ship: The Future of the Endowment Model
Laurence April 7, 2021 Articles
Endowment funds have long been thought to be the best-managed asset pools in the institutional investment world, employing the most capable people and allocating assets to managers, conventional and alternative, who can and do truly focus on the long run? But, after a decade of subpar performance, documented by Richard Ennis in this issue of the JOURNAL OF PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT, …
Will Demographic Trends Drive Higher Inflation and Interest Rates?
Laurence February 10, 2021 Articles
Powerful demographic trends will cause higher inflation and interest rates, and a reduction in inequality as labor reclaims its bargaining power in the global economy, argue two British authors in a persuasive book. That conclusion "caused a furor" when it came from the celebrated British economist and central banker Charles Goodhart, and Manoj Pradhan, a macroeconomist. It is the central …
Conversations with Frank Fabozzi
Laurence January 6, 2021 Articles
Conversations with Frank Fabozzi is a fortnightly series of interviews with leading investment thinkers and practitioners conducted by Frank J. Fabozzi, editor of The Journal of Portfolio Management and a prominent Yale professor and author. Conducted in an informal and personal manner, Frank discusses what lessons his interviewees have learned from their experiences in the financial markets and any key …
What do financial folly and religious frenzy have in common? This question has not been carefully explored since Charles Mackay's spectacular 1852 study, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. But, in a recent book, William Bernstein, a well-known economic historian, neurologist, and investment manager, makes the connection even more strongly than Mackay. The title of his book, The …
Twenty Rules for Life: Morgan Housel's Antidote to Financial Chaos
In a fascinating little book, The Psychology of Money, the investment manager Morgan Housel provides more useful self-help advice than most authors who explicitly set out to do so. My title and subtitle are a takeoff on Jordan Peterson's wildly successful book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, a mostly abstract work of philosophy that nevertheless counsels such …
Uncovering the Mystery Behind Innovation
Ever wonder why Americans enjoy a substantially higher standard of living than any other large country? According to Matt Ridley, it is because the liberal democracy we have nurtured over the last 250 years is the essential catalyst to foster innovation. Our high standard of living is the result of economic growth. The economy grows not just through putting more …