Alternative products are sold through relational marketing that takes place over time. What’s really important for managers to remember is to understand the customer and their needs as top priority
... Read more »
Ten years ago, I conducted an impromptu survey of professionals throughout the alternative asset community to find out what really impacts the ability of all constituents, regardless of provider or investment stance, to form meaningful relationships. As I’d said then, alternative products are sold through relational marketing that takes place over time. Alternatives are bought by professional investors (institutions) and sophisticated individuals (family offices, high net worth people) as a means of capturing upside gain and minimizing downside risks across an overall portfolio of holdings. Always has been, and likely always will be
... Read more »
Indexing has been a winning strategy in terms of risk-adjusted and fee-adjusted performance, and it’s become hugely popular with investors. The problem is determining what an index is. The grandaddies of them all are the Standard & Poor’s 500, originally designed to reflect the largest public companies in the US, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which was part of an investment theory developed by Charles Dow. Standard and Poor’s used its index to promote its data and rating services, while the Dow Theory helped promote the Wall Street Journal and Barron’s
... Read more »
This week, the SEC dealt with some accounting fraud. In the two decades following the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, it’s been (relatively) rare, with executives at public companies choosing to get out in front of wrongdoing to avoid criminal charges and a lot of companies choosing to stay private rather than get caught up in the quarterly earnings chase
... Read more »
Politicians like to sputter “but what about Chicago?” whenever there’s an outbreak of gun violence or political corruption in their community. The city looms large for its shootings (outsized because of our population) and its sleazy politicians, not for its art museums or Nobel Prize winners. But here’s the thing: The Art Institute of Chicago is an amazing museum. Any town can have corrupt politicians
... Read more »
