This is a very short book. I read the whole thing in 40 minutes. ?It has one main idea: what if you could create a less variable portfolio that returns as much as the traditional 60%?S&P 500,?40% Barclays Aggregate blend? ?Wouldn’t you want that?

Most of us would want that. ?I would want earning more at the same level of volatility as the market, but that is another matter.

The authors take us through a variety of backtests, showing us portfolios that did well in the past, if you had invested in them.

They show how investors could have done better by tilting their portfolios toward value socks, small stocks, and international stocks, eventually showing a portfolio invested 60% in 5-year Treasuries, and 40% in stocks that tilt small, value, and international.

Voila! Same returns, with less volatility than the?60%?S&P 500,?40% Barclays Aggregate blend.

But there is a catch here. ?This is the past being amplified — will the future be the same? ?Value stocks are undervalued on average, and small stocks outperform on average, but what if you are in an environment like now, where small stocks are overvalued, value is neutral to undervalued? ?Tilt to value, yes, but maybe don’t tilt small.

Also, with yields so low on five-year Treasuries at 1.65%, that should be reflected into the future for the strategy, so maybe the amount of bonds should be reduced?

The biggest weakness that the book has, and this is true of many books, is that it follows a mean-variance framework. ?The market is far more volatile than a normal distribution, with crises happening far more frequently than a normal distribution would anticipate.

Quibbles

Investing is not a science; it is an art. ?Our principles are vague and subject to many forces beyond our recognition and control.

They make the rookie mistake of describing the calculation of long-term investment returns as a arithmetic mean (Page 16). ?Pros do a geometric mean, which calculates the continuously compounded average return of a buy-and hold investor.

On page 18, their explanation of correlation is weak. ?That said, even great publications like The Economist have blown that in the past, then using my explanation of correlation verbatim (back in the mid-90s).

Summary

This is a good book as it teaches you to tilt you portfolios to value and small companies on average. ?The person who would benefit most from this book is someone who wants to get more out of his investments, but doesn’t want to spend a lot of time on it. ?If you want to, you can buy it here:?Reducing the Risk of Black Swans: Using the Science of Investing to Capture Returns with Less Volatility.

Full disclosure: The PR flack?asked me if I would like a copy and I said ?yes.?

If you enter Amazon through my site, and you buy anything, I get a small commission.? This is my main source of blog revenue.? I prefer this to a ?tip jar? because I want you to get something you want, rather than merely giving me a tip.? Book reviews take time, particularly with the reading, which most book reviewers don?t do in full, and I typically do. (When I don?t, I mention that I scanned the book.? Also, I never use the data that the PR flacks send out.)

Most people buying at Amazon do not enter via a referring website.? Thus Amazon builds an extra 1-3% into the prices to all buyers to compensate for the commissions given to the minority that come through referring sites.? Whether you buy at Amazon directly or enter via my site, your prices don?t change.

Before I get to the letter, I recommend reading,?You’re Ready for Retirement, but Your Savings Aren’t by Jonathan Clement, if you have access to the Wall Street Journal. ?Main point: if you can work until age 70, do that, and then retire.

Here’s the letter:

Hi David,

A little background about myself. ?I am a 24-year male, and have been working for a little over a year. ?The only knowledge I have on investing is passive index fund investing through the book Bogleheads.? I don’t really look at my holdings other than to re-balance every year.

I am currently investing for retirement by maxing out a RothIRA, maxing out a 401k? (that allows a Brokerage account) and some in a taxable Vanguard index fund.? My holdings consist of the total stock and total bond market index funds (90/10). From my current positions my portfolio return has been 20.6%. I calculated the return by return = (market_change + dividends) / total_money. I don’t know if this is a correct formula. The time frame of my holdings is from Jan2012 – June2014.?

I went to a finance workshop that my church was hosting and there was a panel of finance experts (CPA, lawyer, financial advisor) that were indirectly encouraging active investing over passive investing through personal anecdotes.?

Looking at my current portfolio performance, I have a hard time seeing the value in spending time in learning how to actively invest and about finance in general. Currently, I do not follow up on business and market news nor am I reading any economic/investing blogs or magazines. Again, my only investing knowledge is from the Bogleheads book, and so I feel that active investing would be a daunting task.?

Do you have a comparison of an active investment portfolio’s returns (that uses your 8 portfolio rules) against an index fund (such as the Vanguard total stock market) during a bull and bear market? ?Also, do you have any advice on where to begin learning about active investing in general? How should one invest for different goals, say investing for retirement in 40 years vs. investing for a home purchase in the Bay Area in 5-10 years? I’m having a hard time seeing how I would balance time in regards to learning about investing, advancing my career through outside studying, serving in my local church, spending time to witness to family, friends and co-workers, and communion with God.? It seems like passive investing is a simpler solution with a decent average long-term return of 7%. I know I am young, have a lot to learn about life and sometimes stubborn in my thinking, so any thoughts and/or advice would be greatly appreciated.

These are the questions I will try to answer:

1. Should you move to active investing, and are there some alternatives that would allow you gain some of the benefits of active investing, without costing you a lot of time?
2. Do I have a track record that is publicly available?
3. Where to learn about active investing?
4. How should I invest if I want to buy a house in the Bay Area in 5-10 years, and how does that differ from investing for retirement?
5. Is the time put into learning about investing really worth it when I have so many other social and spiritual commitments?

But ?I will answer them in a different order.

Is the time put into learning about investing really worth it when I have so many other social and spiritual commitments?

You can’t be good at active investing without putting time in at least at the level of a hobby, say, one?hour per day, six days a week. ?When I launched into studying investments at age 27, I already had two advantages — A mother who was self-taught in investing (and beat most mutual fund managers handily), and an academic background in economics and finance (which had its pluses and minuses).

But my commitment to learning about investing was one hour per day, six days a week. ?After 5 years, I was an investment actuary, which was pretty rare at that time. ?After 11 years, I was hired into the investment department of a medium-sized life insurer. ?17 years later, I worked for a notable hedge fund. ?23 years later, I started my own firm.

Now, there were some spillover benefits for serving the church. ?I have served on various boards of my denomination, chairing some of them, but my knowledge of finance has been a benefit to many of them, and I have been able to prevent a wide variety of errors. ?Even this week, a Christian group in western Pennsylvania reached out to me regarding a “too good to be true investment,” and I told them it was likely a fraud. ?There are ways that we can serve the church with such knowledge. ?Brothers and sisters that I know come asking for advice, and I do not turn them down.

Now, all that said — no, it is probably not worth your time to learn about active investing. ?I wrote two articles a while ago taking both sides of the argument:

• Why Amateurs Should Invest in Common Stocks
• Charlie Brown the Retail Investor

Decide what you want to emphasize in your life and service to God. ?The church benefits from a few “numbers guys” (as some refer to me in my denomination), but it doesn’t need a lot of them, if the group trusts them, and they are wise and upright.

Should you move to active investing, and are there some alternatives that would allow you gain some of the benefits of active investing, without costing you a lot of time?

I don’t think you have to move to?active management — you might move to some sort of tilt on you passive management, though. ?Over the long run, tilting to value stocks and smaller stocks has been a smart idea. ?Cap-weighted indexes have most of their assets invested in behemoths that like Alexander the Great, have “no more worlds left to conquer.” ?Investing a disproportionate amount passively in mid- and small-cap stocks can be a wise idea, as can passive investing with a value bias. ?Two sides of the issue:

• Why do Value Investors Like Indexing?
• Why do Value Investors Like to Index?

But,?maybe wait a while before you add some mid- and small-cap value index funds… valuations are relatively high for small and mid-cap stocks at present. ?I have a hard time finding truly cheap stocks at present.

Where to learn about active investing?

As for books, you could look through my book reviews, and scan for the word “value.” ?You could visit the website Valuewalk.com; I have to admit I am impressed with what Jacob Wolinsky has done — it is the “go to” site for value investing.

You can also read the letters of notable value investors — Buffett, Klarman, Marks, and more…

How should I invest if I want to buy a house in the Bay Area in 5-10 years, and how does that differ from investing for retirement?

Let me tell you a story. ?My congregation is near DC. ?My congregation asked me to manage the building fund, and for years, I beat the market, but DC area real estate still appreciated faster.

At the same time, many congregations in the denomination, had received buildings for low prices, or virtually free, but those were mostly in rural areas. ?So at prayer meeting in January 2009, after losing a large amount of the building fund, I asked God to drop a building in our lap, as I could not see any way that I would ever do it through my investing, good as it was.

Two months later, we bid on a short sale for a house with a church use permit. ?We had the assets free and clear for it, and closed in May 2009.

Here is my point to you: geographically constrained markets like the Bay Area — there is no good way for the liquid stocks and bonds to keep up with real estate price increases.?Buying a house in the Bay Area is a tough matter, and it might make sense to match assets and liabilities.

You might want to try to buy real estate related assets in the Bay Area — not sure how you could do that, but it would be the investment closest to funding what you want to own.

As for investing for retirement 40+ years from now, maintain a posture of 70-80% risk assets, and 30-20% safe assets. ?I have been 70/30 most of my life. ?Optimal is 80/20, but I take more idiosyncratic risk, and 70/30 just feels better to me. ?My investments are more concentrated, and the cash levels out the jolts.

Do I have a track record that is publicly available?

Yes and no. ?I send it to those who inquire after my services, but I will send you a copy after I publish this. ?I’ve done well, but I know that it might be due to chance. ?That said, my clients get the same investments that I have, so my interests are aligned with them, aside from the fee they pay me. ?I have no other compensation from my investment management.

A letter from a reader:

Hi David,

What would you recommend for a long only equities portfolio?

I too think the market may be overheating, but as always, it’s impossible to tell when the party will end. I would have said the same thing last year this time as well.

This is what I am doing now:

1. Cash is presently 16% of my portfolio.? I let that fluctuate between 0-20%.? I try to be fully invested during crises, and build up some cash when valuations are extended. ?16% means valuations are high, but they could get higher — we aren’t at nosebleed levels.
2. I have more invested in foreign companies than I normally do.? Around 40% of the portfolio is in foreign companies, which are at present undervalued relative to similar US companies.
3. Emphasize companies with strong balance sheets, in industries that will not go away.
4. I own cheap stocks.? The median valuation of the stocks that I own is around 10x earnings, and 1x Net Worth (Book Value).

This isn’t sexy, and if the market roars ahead, my clients and I will underperform.? But if there is a reason that emerges that causes the market to fall, my clients and I will do better than most.

I take more risk when the market is in the tank, and less when everyone thinks things are great. ?This is particularly true when policymakers like the Fed are triumphant over high valuations, and low yield spreads.

This is a time to take less risk, in my opinion, but not a time to take no risk.