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Blog | The Portfolio Doctor

The Portfolio Doctor

My blog provides valuable insights into Nobel Prize-winning financial strategies for investors. By utilizing decades of worldwide peer-reviewed capital markets research and analysis, I demonstrate how to build better investment portfolios with lower risks. I also examine common financial media misinformation and how investors can make better financial decisions.

The Fund Landscape 2023

Each year, Dimensional analyzes returns from a large sample of US-domiciled funds. This year’s study updates results through 2022 and includes returns from mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) domiciled in the US. Our objective is to assess the performance of fund managers relative to benchmarks.

The evidence shows that a majority of fund managers in the sample failed to deliver benchmark-beating returns after costs.

We believe that the results of this research provide a strong case for relying on market prices when making investment decisions.

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We Hope Your iPhone Never Gets Stolen. But Just in Case…

 

Since reporting on a rash of iPhone thefts that rob victims of their digital lives, we’ve heard from lots of readers with one big question: How do I protect my precious assets—from photos in the cloud to money in the bank?

Thieves are watching people type in their iPhone passcodes, then snatching the devices, not only making off with the hardware but also gaining access to the precious Apple
ID and other important online accounts. Victims have lost thousands of dollars and many have been locked out of their Apple accounts permanently. That means no photos, videos and notes, and even potentially losing access to their AirPods or AppleWatches.

Like you, this reporting made us want to do more to safeguard our digital lives and finances in the event of a theft. We believe Apple should reduce the power of the passcode and do more to protect accounts from phone-jackers.

An Apple spokesman said, “We work tirelessly every day to protect our users’ accounts and data, and are always investigating additional protections against emerging threats like this one.”

Meanwhile, here are four areas where you can protect yourself, with step-by-step instructions on what to do.

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Opinion: ESG Does Neither Much Good nor Very Well

esg investing

Trillions of dollars have poured into environmental, social, and governance funds in recent years. In 2021, the figure grew $8 billion a day. Bloomberg Intelligence projects more than one-third of all globally managed assets could carry explicit ESG labels by 2025, amounting to more than $50 trillion. Yet for a financial phenomenon this pervasive, there is astonishingly little evidence of its tangible benefit.

The implicit promise of ESG investing is that you can do well and do good at the same time. Investors presume they can make a market return while advancing causes such as lowering carbon emissions and income inequality. But multiple studies find ESG strategies are doing little of either. Bradford Cornell of the University of California, Los Angeles and Aswath Damodaran of New York University reviewed shareholder value created by firms with high and low ESG ratings - scores provided by professional rating agencies. Their conclusion: "telling form that being socially responsible will deliver higher growth profits and value is false advertising.

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Stagflation

stagflation

Markets gifted us with another burst of volatility and headlines are looking apocalyptic again.  Some folks might think it's time to bail on markets for the summer, but I'll tell you why that thinking is a mistake.

First, let's peel back some layers to explore what's driving markets. (Want to discuss any concerns directly? Just click this  link  and let me know.) The latest selloff was largely driven by concerns about how the pace of Federal Reserve interest rate hikes could affect economic growth. The Fed's "hawkish" policy of rapidly rising interest rates to bring down inflation seems likely to take a chunk out of economic growth.

Is a recession or bear market on the way?  Those are risks we are prepared for.

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Money Supply and the U.S. Dollar

An article by Wealth Management.

As the U.S. economy continues to be in a highly inflationary period, it may be helpful for advisors to study up on how money supply is measured, recent circulation trends and performance of the U.S. dollar. here are the latest developments in world currencies and money supply.

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Surprisingly Benign: How Stocks Respond to Hikes in Fed Funds Rate

stock market
An article by Dimensional Advisors.

On May 4, the US Federal Reserve Increased the target federal funds rate by 50 basis points as part of what the central bank said will be a series of rate increases to combat soaring inflation in the US. Some investors may worry that rising interest rates will decrease equity valuations and therefore lead to relatively poor equity market performance. However, history offers good news: Equity returns in the US have been positive on average following hikes in the fed funds rate.

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The Surprising Dividends of Transformed Investing

client question of the week
This article is written by Dave Goetsch who is the Executive Producer of the CBS comedy "United States of AI." He previously served as Executive Producer of "The Big Bang Theory" and as a writer on "3rd Rock from the Sun." Goetsch is a Dimensional consultant.

I’ve been working in sitcom writing rooms for the past 25 years, and one of the most discussed, and least understood, topics is investing. To be in one of those rooms means that you have already beaten the odds. In success, the financial benefits can be fast and huge (Google “writer” plus “nine-figure deal”), but in failure, the financial misfortune can come even faster and be even more extreme.

So what do you do? How do you plan when there’s no way to know which show you’ll be working on one, three, or five years from now? Or whether you’ll be working at all? Thanks to my exposure to a better way of investing, I have an incredible advantage over almost every one of my colleagues.

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August 2021 - Monthly Market Review

August 2021 monthly market review

This report features a market review that discusses global stock trends, U.S. stock returns, and U.S. Treasury yields. There's also an article illustrating the magnitude and speed of the economic recovery since the onset of COVID-19 and the subsequent recession, as well as an academic article: Financial Decision-Making in Married Couples 

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