If you’re not impressed by the ongoing strength in retail sales, you should be. Or maybe you’re just perplexed. In any case, consumption rose a strong 0.8% in March on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Census Bureau reports. Although that’s down a bit from February’s 1.0% jump, there’s nary a sign in the latest numbers that the consumer is stressed or poised to give up shopping any time soon.
Daily Archives: April 16, 2012
The High Cost Of Searching For Investing Talent
The evidence in favor of indexing is convincing, perhaps overwhelming. But finance is conspicuously light on definitive laws and so it’s not surprising that research on active management continues to offer encouragement for those who think they can beat the odds and generate alpha through time. But there are two ways to read these pro-active management studies. One interpretation (probably the more popular view) is using these papers to rationalize alpha’s charms as widely available for those who are committed to working harder. The alternative view, which animates my thinking, is to see these studies as evidence that chasing alpha demands a lot of extra time and effort for an uncertain payoff that’s probably out of reach for most of us in the long run.