This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Jonathan J. Woolverton, CFA will be awarding a $15 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.
JJ's investment career spans more than five decades. He has been the chief investment strategist for a pension plan sponsor, a managing director and senior consultant within a global investment planning consultant firm, and a managing director and chief operating officer of an investment management organization. Over his career, JJ has attended well over a thousand investment committee meetings as a plan sponsor, a consultant, and a money manager. In the majority of these meetings, he has found that committee members lack three things: in-depth investment expertise to effectively carry out their fiduciary responsibilities, the necessary time allocation to administer and manage the investment program in the best interests of the beneficiaries, and the ability to develop an efficient monitoring system to hold all service providers accountable for the products and services they provide.
This book outlines the steps to be taken in establishing investment policy; formulating asset mix strategy; creating an appropriate investment management structure; undertaking investment manager searches; and highlighting the conflicts of interest, biases, and self-interests of the various service providers.
This book is designed to assist members of investment committees in their role as fiduciaries/trustees/administrators.
Enjoy an Exclusive Excerpt
The one thing that can be counted on in the investment management community is the number of topics up for discussion and debate at any given time.
ACTIVE STRATEGIES VERSUS PASSIVE APPROACHES
The most consistent ongoing debate within the investment community is that of active strategies versus passive/index-matched approaches. This debate has been raging since the first index fund was set up in the early 1970s. As each year passes, active management is slowly (maybe not too slowly) losing ground to passive approaches (at least in the more efficient markets—specifically, large-cap U.S. equity and core bond mandates). Passive approaches used to be the default to active management when active managers failed to meet their objectives. More and more, passive approaches are being considered as the first line of defense—with niche active strategies added around passive anchors or cores when active management is proven as an attractive alternative or complement.
The debate mainly centers on whether markets, in general, are efficient. However, no market is truly efficient—the issue is more the degree to which it is efficient (or inefficient). The U.S. market is the most efficient market in the world. Since the 1990s, studies have shown time and time again that the majority of active U.S., large-cap equity managers consistently underperform the S&P 500—yet the majority of large-cap equity assets in the U.S. continue to be actively managed with the S&P 500 as the benchmark. There are really true believers out there. Incidentally, these studies show that this persistent underperformance is evident even before considering the fees of active management. When fees are included, the percentage of alpha-challenged money managers moves higher.
About the Author: Jonathan J. Woolverton, CFA, has spent his whole career in the investment field—over fifty years. After graduating from university in Pennsylvania, he moved to Toronto, Canada, where he began his career in the investment department of an insurance company. In his role as investment officer he was responsible for formulating investment strategy and overseeing all investments within the equity and fixed-income divisions. JJ later joined Ontario Hydro as their chief investment strategist where all pension funds were managed internally. JJ left the money management business to become an investment planning consultant. He was a founding partner and managing director of Frank Russell Canada. He moved back to the money management side as the managing director and chief operating officer of Guardian Capital Inc. JJ graduated from Westminster College with a BBA and achieved his Chartered Financial Analyst certification. JJ has published numerous articles on the pension and investment industries and has been the keynote speaker at many conferences and seminars.
Buy the book at Amazon, Amazon CA, Indigo Chapters, Barnes and Noble, iBooks, ,or Smashwords.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Thanks for hosting!
ReplyDelete