Investing? Beware Consultants, They Will Cost You

The 2015 Commonfund prize has just been granted to an academic paper that concludes:

• we find no evidence that [consultants']... recommendations add value, suggesting that the search for winners, encouraged and guided by investment consultants, is fruitless
• the portfolio of all products recommended by investment consultants delivered average returns net of management fees of 6.31% per year (7.13% before fees). These returns are, on average 1.12% lower than the returns obtained by other products available to plan sponsors, which are not recommended by consultants.
• Consultants face a conflict of interest, as arguably they have a vested interest in complexity. Proposing an active US equity strategy, which involves more due diligence, complexity, monitoring, switching and therefore more consultancy work, drives up consulting revenues in comparison to simple cheap solutions.
• investment consultants themselves are shy of disclosing the sort of information which would allow plan sponsors, or any outsider, to measure their own performance.

Moral of the story: when making any investment based on the recommendation of another, always look at the vested interest of the person(s) making the recommendation--usually the conflict of interest is obvious, but in other cases, you have to dig deeper.

Hat Tip: Investing: Nobody knows anything | The Economist


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Consequences should be considered BEFORE the fact

Consequences should be considered before the fact—before deciding to join a government-union-corporate axis to push for immigration reform that well might help the overall rate of economic growth and profits, but evoke a lack of enthusiasm from the unemployed programmers who will have to compete with the new high-skilled immigrants, or an unwelcoming attitude towards the unskilled newcomers who drive down wages. Or before handing out multimillion-dollar bonuses to bankers so recently bailed out by the taxpayer. Or before exposing valuable technology to theft by China’s state-owned enterprises in order to sell a few more feet of rope in that emerging market (source: Saving Capitalism | The Weekly Standard)

• Too many laws on the books.
• Too many giveaways and special tax breaks.
• Too many unintended consequences.

When is the last time Washington repealed laws, simplified government, really reduced the complexity and size of government, eliminated redundant programs, etc? Washington's main problem? Too much money. The NSA is just one example, Iraq is another -- if we had a smaller government budget, a smaller military, we would have never invaded Iraq as foolishly as Bush-Cheney did, the NSA would have never begun spying on US citizens for no good nor constitutional reason.  Sometimes you just have to take the credit card away from the stupid, although perhaps well-meaning in the moment, inept bureaucrats. I'd rather see Washington reallocate about 20% of the current US budget to building public infrastructure in the fifty states. Washington is too fat, too stupid, too lazy--living off the "fat of the land"--they don't know what "recession" is in Washington, they never took a cut in pay, nor suffered layoffs. Past time for reform and reallocation of priorities and resources at the federal level.

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