Top all-time · #12267
Index Fund Advisors, Inc.
Company blog · ifa.com/articleseconomicsbusiness
Index Fund Advisors, Inc. is the company blog at ifa.com, writing about economics and business. Since 2015, 6 different Hacker News readers have linked it 15 times. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (4) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters cite IFA articles as evidence in index-fund debates: that most actively managed funds trail their benchmark, and that Jim Cramer's picks underperform the index. The comments do not judge the writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 4 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Index Fund Advisors is a fee-only independent fiduciary financial advisor that specializes in risk-appropriate portfolios of index funds.
Most-linked posts?
- /articles/despite_brief_reprieve_2018_spiva_report_reveals_active_funds_fail_dent_indexing_lead_-_works/2 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2019-05-27
What Hacker News says?
> It's not a zero sum game necessarily. It is, actually. William F. Sharpe laid it out in the 1991 paper "The Arithmetic of Active Management": * https://web.stanford.edu/~wfsharpe/art/active/active.htm * https://www.jstor.org/stable/4479386?seq=1 Sharpe won the 1990 Economics Nobel for other work: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_F._Sharpe The more active a trader is, over a longer time frame, the more likel…
Comment linking /articles/despite_brief_reprieve_2018_spiva_report_reveals_active_funds_fail_dent_indexing_lead_-_works/
on “Ask HN: I have $450K cash, what should I do to maximize my return?”Submitted Where Are the Customers' Yachts? Or a Good Hard Look at Wall Street (2012) as a story · 102 points
HN discussion> ARK Invest has vastly outperformed the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100. There are always funds that do better, until they don't: * https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2020/12/a-short-history-of-... Over a 15-year timeframe, most fund managers (especially in the US) underperform benchmarks: * https://www.ifa.com/articles/despite_brief_reprieve_2018_spi...
Comment linking /articles/despite_brief_reprieve_2018_spiva_report_reveals_active_funds_fail_dent_indexing_lead_-_works/
on “How this Ends”Submitted Where Are the Customers' Yachts? Or a Good Hard Look at Wall Street (2012) as a story · 5 points
HN discussion100% spot on. It's like Jim Cramer and Mad Money. His stock picks are terrible compared to the index/average, yet he somehow has a following (and a show) https://www.ifa.com/articles/cramer_chasing_mad_money/
Comment linking /articles/cramer_chasing_mad_money/
on “Success stories are propaganda (2017)”Submitted Where Are the Customers' Yachts? Or a Good Hard Look at Wall Street (2012) as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> Personally I wish index funds were abolished, forcing everyone to pick and choose the companies they think will flourish or fail. Given that even the so-called professionals that manage active funds can't consistently beat the index, J. Random Schmoe has no chance: * https://www.aaii.com/journal/article/most-mutual-funds-do-no... * https://www.ifa.com/articles/despite_brief_reprieve_2018_spi... PDFs: * https://us.…
Comment linking /articles/despite_brief_reprieve_2018_spiva_report_reveals_active_funds_fail_dent_indexing_lead_-_works/
on “Half of US stock fund assets are now invested in index funds”Submitted Where Are the Customers' Yachts? Or a Good Hard Look at Wall Street (2012) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThere's a few layers to this. If you want higher than market (average) returns, there are known factors that you invest in that have higher expected (but not guaranteed) returns: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fama–French_three-factor_model Buffett's historical success has been quantified in light of this: * https://www.aqr.com/Insights/Research/Journal-Article/Buffet... * https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?ab…
Comment linking /articles/despite_brief_reprieve_2018_spiva_report_reveals_active_funds_fail_dent_indexing_lead_-_works/
on “Stonks Are What You Can Get Away With: NFTs and Financial Nihilism”Submitted Where Are the Customers' Yachts? Or a Good Hard Look at Wall Street (2012) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionYou can find lots of research on it but first, between 85-90% of actively managed investment funds underperform their benchmark: https://www.ifa.com/articles/despite_brief_reprieve_2018_spi... That means it is very, very hard to outperform. Then, if you do outperform, that tends to be an exceptional year followed by not so great results. https://www.morningstar.com/articles/1017292/what-to-expect-... Key comment: "O…
Comment linking /articles/despite_brief_reprieve_2018_spiva_report_reveals_active_funds_fail_dent_indexing_lead_-_works/
on “Innovation Is Inherently Controversial”> Maybe by finding a well managed small fund and buying into it? Just because a fund manager is good now, does not mean they'll be good in the future. It's the same situation as with stocks: how do you know when to jump ship? Further, over longer periods of time, most fund managers don't beat the market average: * https://www.ifa.com/articles/despite_brief_reprieve_2018_spi... And just because a few funds do manage…
Comment linking /articles/despite_brief_reprieve_2018_spiva_report_reveals_active_funds_fail_dent_indexing_lead_-_works/
on “Ask HN: How to start learning about investments?”> An endowment should be diversified across asset classes (metals, real estate, equities, bonds) and strategies (PE, hedge funds, VC, etc) and have a moderate but stable return stream. Over the last ten years, all the fancy-pants portfolios that Ivey League endowments used have generally under-performed a 60/40 portfolio: * https://www.markovprocesses.com/blog/ivy-league-endowments-f... * https://www.institutionalin…
Comment linking /articles/despite_brief_reprieve_2018_spiva_report_reveals_active_funds_fail_dent_indexing_lead_-_works/
on “University Endowment Sued for Under performing the S&P 500”> Those wall street middlemen are way better a designing mutual funds and ETFs than I am. Unless those mutual funds or ETFs are passive index funds, no they are not (unless the design is meant to extract fees): * https://www.ifa.com/articles/active-fund-managers-benchmark-...
Comment linking /articles/active-fund-managers-benchmark-analysis-sp
on “The death of the 60/40 portfolio”Putting all of your money in CD's is like overpaying for insurance. Index funds are your friend as you get the market portfolio (important for risk minimization) with minimized costs. WRT "market timing," the lay investor wins by NOT relying on market timing. Even if you think the market will move in a direction, it's impossibly hard to guess when. Don't believe me? Check out this study which shows that missing sing…
Comment linking /12steps/step4/missing_the_best_and_worst_days/
on “Why Do We Still Care About the Dow? (2012)”
