I, like many others, was surprised by the revelation that Goldman Sachs has been charged with defrauding investors. While my research into this is somewhat limited at this time, I couldn't help but be struck by a statement in today's Wall Street Journal front page...
Performance Perspectives Blog
Thoughts on performance measurement from David Spaulding and other members of our team.
Isn’t there always the other side?
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Annualizing home runs and performance
The start of the baseball season never disappoints in providing metaphorical examples to use relative to performance measurement. Watching ESPN this morning an announcer commented on St. Louis Cardinals' Albert Pujols' early season home run success, pointing out that...
Getting the pricing right
I just finished listening to Gregory Zuckerman's The Greatest Trade Ever and highly recommend it if you'd like some insights into how John Paulson managed to make several billion dollars in a difficult market. Much of the profit came from the rather esoteric credit...
“Your results comply …”
Just when you thought it was safe. Years ago some folks thought that simply the use of certain software would automatically make them compliant with the AIMR-PPS(R) and/or GIPS(R) standards. But by now, we would think that this myth would have gone away. But it...
Tulipomania redux?
In our Fundamentals of Performance Measurement course I often mention the ailment known as "rootaphobia," or the "fear of roots" (as in square roots; the root symbol). I later mention "tulipomania." And while the former is contrived, the latter isn't as it refers to...
Reputational risk
I just posted a dozen tips to choose a verifier and mentioned a couple times the issue of "reputational risk."If you don't think avoiding this risk is important, I have two words for you: Tiger Woods.The photo's announcement of Tiger's return to golf couldn't avoid...
Lehman’s challenges and questionable actions
The Wall Street Journal reported today that a very detailed and costly to produce (> $30 million) report on Lehman has just been published. Is this a "must read"? Perhaps not, especially given its length (2,200 pages, with the table of contents 45 pages long) but...
More than 1,000 visitors so far!
We're pleased to announce that more than 1,000 "unique visitors" have visited this blog! May not sound like a lot, when we consider some sites that have tens of thousands of visitors, but our industry isn't that big, so to get more than 1,000 in less than 10...
Shorten your URLs
She's done it again! I enjoy reading Susan Weiner's blog because (a) I like to write and (b) she introduces some neat ideas. In yesterday's post she introduces us to a way to shorten our URLs, through a service called TinyURL.com. I just tried it and it works quite...
Book ideas
Today's Sunday (London) Times identifies two books which should probably be on your to-buy list: Harry Markopolos, who tried more than anyone to get the SEC to see what was really behind Bernard Madoff's "success" has penned No One Would Listen: A True Financial...