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GREYCOURT
WHITE PAPERS
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White Papers
Home : White Papers : [48-30], [29-20], [19-10], [9-1]
White Paper No. 29 – Numeracy, Innumeracy and Hard Slogging
Working from a recent speech by John C. Bogle, founder
and past CEO of The Vanguard Group, this paper demonstrates just how difficult it is for wealthy, taxable investors to grow their wealth at anything like the rates usually discussed by financial advisors.
White Paper No. 28 – Good News for Pennsylvania Trust Beneficiaries: The Principal and Income Act of 2002
The
Uniform Principal and Income Act was first promulgated back in 1997, but it wasn’t until July 15, 2002 that the Pennsylvania legislature got around to enacting it. The purpose of this white paper is to outline the
key provisions of the Act and to explain why it is so significant for trusts, trustees and, most important, trust beneficiaries.
White Paper No. 25 – Hedge Fund Investing: The End of the Beginning
This white paper
provides an overview of the hedge fund industry as it exists today, and identifies the myriad risks facing hedge fund investors, including the lack of transparency and an excess of capital chasing too few funds. The
paper also illustrates how diversification techniques and careful selection can mitigate these risks.
White Paper No. 24 – A Modest Proposal: Let’s End Conflicts of Interest in the Wealth Advisory Business
The
problem of financial conflicts of interest is a perfect example of our ability to understand a concept intellectually but fail to grasp its full significance. This white paper explores examples of conflicts we knew
existed, but the consequences of which were monstrously underestimated.
White Paper No. 22 – Corporate Crooks and Investor Trust
It’s gotten to the point where
we’re afraid to turn on the news or pick up a newspaper. Like most investors, Greycourt has been deeply disturbed by the chicanery and outright fraud that have come to characterize too much of corporate America. But
before we give in to despair and take investment action that could be damaging to our wealth, let’s step back and try to put the current, appalling situation in perspective. While it is too early for any of us to
understand all the implications of the Bubble Markets of the late 1990s and the resulting corporate scandals, some of those implications are already apparent. Not all of them will be palatable to investors, but the
willingness to stare unpalatable truths in the eye is one of the hallmarks of successful investing. Here is a summary of those implications.
White Paper No. 20 – Modern Portfolio Theory and Quantum Mechanics
The year 2002 marks the 50th anniversary
of the publication of Harry Markowitz’ seminal paper on mean variance optimization, a then-obscure event which nonetheless inaugurated what we now know as modern portfolio theory (MPT). Over the following five
decades, Markowitz and his followers have contributed enormously to our understanding of the behavior of capital markets and of the nature of risk and its relationship to investment returns. MPT has, in a broad way,
allowed us to model how markets are likely to behave over very long periods of time, and has therefore allowed us to base the design of investment portfolios on principles that are at least in some fundamental way
related to likely market behavior. For investors born after MPT concepts were incorporated into real-world investment portfolios, it’s hard to believe what a revolutionary change MPT has occasioned.
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