Investment-management

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in understanding the culture and ethics that have lead to the numerous scandals the economy has been faced with as of late. If you are an investor or the board member of company, this text is worth reading. The investor benefits from a door being opened into companies that practice unethical financial practices and provides an investment warning. A board member, or anyone hiring an executive that has more interest in the long term viability of their company than the short term gains and rapid fallout associated with using accounting tricks to mislead the public will gain insight into the type of individual and practices that should be avoided at all cost. What these companies have done goes far beyond their employees and shareholders. It has shaken the whole economy.

I think that every MBA student and practitioner should read this book not to repeat another accounting scandal and not to mess up our economy again.

Separate accounts are the darling of the investment industry. They are targeted at wealthy investors, and they charge significantly higher fees than mutual funds. Moreover, because the fees are billed as a percentage of assets they generate consistent income for money managers and brokers, in contrast to brokerage commissions which decline when investors stop trading in down markets. In other words: separate accounts are big earners for Wall Street.

This book, like others by authors including Freeman, advocates separate accounts, and in so doing runs counter to two widely accepted findings of academic finance: (1) active management fails to beat the market indexes, and (2) keeping costs (ie. fees) down has a dramatic impact on long term investment returns.

If you're going to read this book, make sure you read the myriad of arguments on the other side of the debate. (The debate is actually rather lopsided.) You can find material in book form or for free online. For the former, try works by John Bogle on mutual funds, William Bernstein on asset allocation and indexing, and Chandan Sengupta for a basic outline of the arguments for indexing. For the latter, try the material at ABetterWayToInvest which has a chapter on separately managed accounts.

Clear and concise. Managed accounts used to be for the wealthy. Things have changed though...investors can get into a separate account for $25,000 or less. The Jury is in... there is no doubt that many money managers beat the indexs (the good ones). These guys are professional money managers NOT MARKETERS who sell for commissions. Consequently, this allows them to focus on what's important, managing assets. Further, after one calculates the true costs (including transaction costs) mutual funds are slightly more expensive than the average separate account manager. The problem with mutual funds is that they typically are required to invest a minimum of 75% of the investors assets at ALL TIMES! Remember 9-11? Who wants to be in full-on in the market then?! Separate account managers were able to flee the equities markets because they aren't bound by the "diversification" restrictions that mutual funds are. Stuff to think about....