Performance Perspectives Blog

Thoughts on performance measurement from David Spaulding and other members of our team.

Why do we refuse to see the flaws in our beliefs?

Why do we refuse to see the flaws in our beliefs?

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal had an interview with Nobel Prize winner and author Daniel Kahneman, regarding his new book, Thinking Fast and Slow ("So Much for Snap Decisions," by Diane Cole). I am still making my way through the book, and continue to find much of...

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Math Mystery

Math Mystery

In the March 27, 2012 issue of the WSJ, Dan Fitzpatrick and Victoria McGrane discussed how large banks who released "stress test" results are being questioned by the Federal Reserve on the approaches they took to derive their results ("Banks Stress Over Fed Test...

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John Simpson speaks at First Rate annual conference

John Simpson speaks at First Rate annual conference

This week, my friend and colleague, John D. Simpson, CIPM spoke at First Rate's annual user conference. As I understand it, this event had a record attendance. And while I'd like to think that it's because John was there, I know there was much more to it (for...

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Turning lemons into lemonade

Turning lemons into lemonade

We just discovered that we had a printing error with the second edition of my Handbook of Investment Performance: we left off part of the bibliography.Now, you might think this isn't a big deal, but for a firm that prides itself on the highest quality in all we...

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Have you been a victim of “planning fallacy”?

Have you been a victim of “planning fallacy”?

In his recent book, Thinking Fast and Slow, Economic Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman speaks of the "planning fallacy," a term he and his former collaborator, Amos Tversky, coined "to describe plans and forecasts that are unrealistically close to best-case scenarios...

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The value of subjective judgment

The value of subjective judgment

I must confess that I am enjoying Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow quite a bit; so much so that not only am I listening to it (via my Audible.com account) but am referencing it, too (via my Kindle download!). And so, this affords me the opportunity to...

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Simple Question: What is a Cumulative Return?

Simple Question: What is a Cumulative Return?

I'm conducting a software certification for a client, and reviewing their documentation, which includes a statement that begins, "If you have a cumulative return..." However, they fail to define this term. And so, I will offer my thoughts. But, I decided to check...

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It’s pi day!

It’s pi day!

I thank my wife for reminding me that today is "pi day." It should not go without notice."Pi day"???Yes, you remember pi, right? Recall that pi is a constant that is the ratio of any Euclidean circle’s circumference to its diameter. It's value is approximately...

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Justifying claims and beliefs

Justifying claims and beliefs

I began listening to Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman this week, and am finding it to be both interesting and motivating. Daniel Kahneman is a Nobel Prize winner. In this book he discusses various studies that he and his colleagues conducted.It occurred to...

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