In this past weekend's WSJ,Jonah Lehrer had an article titled "Learning How to Focus on Focus." He quotes psychologist Herbert Simon: "A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention." Lehrer tell us that a key is to strengthen our "executive function," which...
Performance Perspectives Blog
Thoughts on performance measurement from David Spaulding and other members of our team.
The overwhelm effect
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What is the “sell side”?
We have been engaged in a research project for a client, who wanted information on "sell side fixed income attribution systems." This cause me to reflect a bit on the term "sell side." You've no doubt run into the terms "buy side" and "sell side"; but do you know what...
A challenging question: what to do with the money?
A colleague recently passed me a question that was sent to him: what is the proper treatment of class action settlement proceeds from securities-related lawsuits or bankruptcies, which are then deposited into an investment portfolio.You may have encountered this...
Attribution survey … please join in!
TSG has announced that it's conducting a survey on performance attribution. The survey will address all aspects of attribution, including approaches, preferences, and systems. Five cosponsors: DST Global Solutions, First Rate Investment Systems, StatPro,...
Words matter
In yesterday's WSJ, William McGurn wrote about adhering to codes of conduct, and began by citing West Point's code: "A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal or tolerate those who do." As a former Army officer who served with many "ring knockers," I was already familiar...
Math mistakes matter
In this past weekend's Wall Street Journal, Carl Bialik's article, "Technology Can't Save Us From Math Mishaps, brought home the problems we face daily in trying to ensure a relatively high degree of accuracy in the information we report.He cited S&P's $2 trillion...
What goes around, comes around
The revelation that the U.S. Justice Department is now investigating S&P's ratings of pools of mortgage backed securities is perhaps totally unrelated to S&P' recent downgrading of the U.S. government's credit worthiness, but the timing does suggest otherwise....
What is the difference between functions and features?
John Simpson and I are spending this week working on a new service which we will introduce later this year (stay tuned for details!). During the course of our conversation, a question arose: what's the difference between functions and features?I must confess that I...
500! Can it be???
wwwGoogle "500" and you'll findS&P 500 Indy 500 a card game called 500 perhaps even a reference to a movie about the "500" days of summer. Well, this post represents a "500" of a different kind: it's the 500th for this blog, which I think is pretty incredible....
Is it okay to “net” same day cash flows?
I conducted a consulting assignment earlier this week, where I reviewed a client's operation, including their approach to calculating and reporting returns. A question came up as to whether or not cash flows can be netted if they occur on the same day. My initial...