Over the past few weeks we've seen many indicators of a turnaround for the economy at large and the market in specific. The very wide and dynamic intraday shifts in the DJIA, for example, seem to have dissipated, and bad news doesn't cause the market to nosedive as it...
Performance Perspectives Blog
Thoughts on performance measurement from David Spaulding and other members of our team.
As the economy turns
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Madoff: the other shoes are beginning to fall
Happy the man who meditates on wisdom,and reflects on knowledge.Sirach 15: 20.When we learned of the Madoff fraud, we knew that he couldn't have pulled it off singlehandedly; he had to have coconspirators. And this week we learned of one, who had been with him a long...
If you say only one prayer a day, make it “Thank you”
We are especially blessed with the arrival of our first grandson, Brady David Spaulding, born to our son, Christopher, and his wife, Monica, Saturday, August 1, @ 10:27 PM, at St. Peters Hospital in New Brunswick, NJ. Weighing in at 6 lbs, 12 ounces, and with a height...
Jim Johnson, age 68, succumbs to cancer
Jim Johnson, Philadelphia Eagles Defensive Coordinator, died today of cancer (see https://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=4362252). What, you may ask, does this have to do with performance measurement?On January 28,2005, the Home News Tribune (a NJ paper) ran a...
…you say poe-tay-toe, I say poe-tah-toe
Back on June 22nd I commented about a discussion I had with a colleague regarding the use of the term "volatility" for standard deviation and whether or not "variability" was more accurate.I sent a note to Bill Sharpe, who in his 1966 Journal of Business article...
Passion & Performance Measurement
"Well, no offense to Aristotle, but in my three years at Harvard I have come to find that passion is a key ingredient to the study and practice of law"also sprach Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon) in Legally BlondI have come to find that passion is a key ingredient in...
Happy July 4th!
As we witness the struggles of many throughout the world who strive for freedom that we, here in the United States, and many others throughout the world have, we should be mindful of our own blessings. Achieving and maintaining freedom isn't free...it comes with a...
Moneyball & performance measurement
This morning Patrick Fowler and I arrived in beautiful (though wet) Stockholm, Sweden for the Spring meeting of the European chapter of the Performance Measurement Forum. This site marks the fourth Scandinavian country we've held meetings in (previous ones were in...
A new author & a new book!
Congratulations to our friend, David Cariño of Russell Investments, who (along with coauthors Jon Christopherson & Wayne Ferson) just released a new book: Portfolio Performance Measurement and Benchmarking (McGraw-Hill).David is a member of the Journal of...
Normality of returns…are they?
As I make progress with an upcoming article I'm writing on standard deviation, I will occasionally share some of the information I discover. For the data I'm using the monthly returns for the S&P 500 for the 36-year period ending December 2008. I am first...