14 Sep 2016

Media’s Future Will Follow Markets’

Back in 1991, when I was freelancing, casting central newsman Bob Flaherty, then of Equities magazine and now head of his own financial news service, told me to get on a train to New York, visit the offices of something called Instinet and write a story about it.

Instinet, owned by Reuters at the time, was shaking up the trading business with its recently introduced “crossing” system which allowed institutional investors to trade directly with each other, effectively bypassing the exchanges and stock markets. read more

1 Sep 2016

Active vs. Passive: Game Over

I just finished a white paper for a large financial institution on the well worn topic about which is better: active or passive investment strategies.

Sometimes, it’s productive revisit old topics because they bring a fresh perspective that either reinforces ones’ conviction or makes a slight chink in the wall that slowly exerts its influence until the next time the subject is revisited.

No such change of conviction occurred about the superiority of passive investment strategies after a deep dive on behalf of my client.  While I managed to write about 2,000 words on the topic, to me, it boils down to this: read more