The opinions expressed on this page are those of your editor,
John Budden, and
not those of our Friends or Legends (living or dead); unless
specifically stated. We are working on our ability to communicate
with our immortal Legends and will keep you informed on
any ‘break through’.
Over the past 40 years in the investment business your editor has
worked with a number of highly qualified Canadian professionals. On
this page, we will provide you with the names of professionals from
various disciplines who we consider to be trustworthy and competent...
September 2007: Compliments of Merrill Lynch...The
Brave New World:
Winning Product Strategies for a Changing Global Market
by John Casey
December 15, 2007:
Compliments of the
Globe and Mail...Pension
funds, the new riverboat gamblers by BRIAN MILNER
November 24, 2007:
Compliments of The Globe and Mail...
Knowing the known unknowns of a possible market disaster
by Brian Milner
November 23, 2007:
Prem Watsa: He has never been more bearish
October 18, 2007:
Hedging Interest Rate Risks in Dutch Pension Funds and
Life Insurance Companies
Xu Beilin - Faculty of Sciences, Vrije Universiteit; De
Boelelaan 1081a, NL-1081 HV Amsterdam
November 16, 2007
Fund Managers Who Take Big Bets: Skilled or
Overconfident by
Klaas P. Baks, Jeffrey A. Busse, and T. Clifton Green
October 21, 2007:
So You Want To Be The Next Warren Buffett? Hows
Your Writing? By Mark Sellers. MUST READ
August 8, 2006
Public Pension Plans Face Billions in Shortages
By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH
August 4, 2006
OPEN LETTER
March 18, 2006
The growing threat to defined benefit pensions
by Kristin Goff
March 17, 2006
Compliments of The Financial Post
Dossier: Lori McLeod looks at the business story of
the week....
The Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan is in a tough
position
March 17, 2006
Compliments of the Globe and Mail
Crunch time for Ontario Teachers
Growing shortfall brings call for reduced benefits,
higher contributions
By Leonard Zehr
June 10, 2005
Compliments of Reuters
Trustees Do Not Understand Investments
An academic study supported by the National Association
of Pension Funds has found that trustees have no common
understanding of the principles of investment theory and
practice. It found they are prone to the same cognitive
anomalies as the rest of the population.
"Put simply, trustees do not share a common
understanding of the most important (albeit abstract)
principles underpinning modern investment theory and
practice," the Oxford University researchers wrote.
The comments come in the 32-page Pension Fund Trustee
Competence: Decision-Making in Problems Relevant to
Investment Practice, by Gordon Clark, Emiko Caerlewy-Smith
and John Marshall. They added their findings about
trustees' decision-making were troubling as the range of
their solutions to problems was far greater than
anticipated.
"It is clear, based on our experimental strategy, that
pension fund trustees are prone to the cognitive
anomalies and biases that researchers in psychology have
attributed to the population at large," the researchers
stated. They tested 40 trustees of defined benefit
pension funds, sourced via the NAPF, alongside 80 Oxford
undergraduates as a reference point.
"As expected, pension fund decision-making was shown to
be less than ideal...trustees are nothing like the
super-human calculating machines" of economic theory,
the academics wrote. They added that trustees do not use
the available data in an efficient manner to test
solutions to problems. "If indicative of the nature and
range of trustee decision-making, these results have
important implications for the coherence of collective
decision-making and the role of fund advisors and
service providers," the authors concluded.
