Great Rotation revisited
There’s been a lot of debate about the idea of a “great rotation” from bonds to equities, and every Wall Street strategist has a view (consensus: the equity bit will happen soon, but bond yields won’t rise yet as central banks keep on buying).
Alain Bokobza at SocGen has come up with a lovely chart to back up their view that money should be flowing into equity mutual funds, as indeed it has started to do. Read more
The CMH (Cost Matters Hypothesis)
Active investment still has some active defenders, at least in the UK, to judge by the reaction to a recent Long View on the subject. And digging into the reasons for active funds’ persistent problems, it is easy to see why. Despite the claims of the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) that it is impossible to beat the market other than by luck, it appears that an impressive number of managers do achieve the feat.
The problem is that they do not manage to beat the index by enough to be able to pay themselves and still pass on a decent performance to their clients. In other words, to quote Jack Bogle, the founder of Vanguard and the spiritual father of index investing, the case for passive investing rests on the CMH (Cost Matters Hypothesis), not the EMH. Read more
| About this blog | Blog guide |
James Mackintosh is the Financial Times' Investment Editor, writing and presenting the daily Short View column and video. In 16 years at the FT his posts have included comment editor, motor industry editor and hedge funds correspondent, as well as spells in the Parliamentary lobby and Paris. He was the first reporter hired for FT.com, joining two weeks before it launched.
John Authers is the Financial Times' Senior Investment Columnist, writing the Saturday Long View and a regular Monday column. In a 22-year career at the FT, his previous posts have included global head of the Lex column, investment editor, US markets editor, Mexico City bureau chief and US banking correspondent. His latest book is The Fearful Rise of Markets. 
Related columns