#1: After another two-day stock market drops in Shanghai, (984 reads) 作者: ceo/cfo, 时间: 2007-7-06 周五, 06:16 — 作者：ceo/cfo 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
this might be helpful:
Getting More Out of Lessons
THIS LAST WEEKEND MARKED THE COMPLETION of the Hulbert Financial Digest's 27th year of tracking the performance of investment-advisory newsletters. An analysis of which strategies that have worked over the years, and a comparison of them with those approaches that have not, allows several important investment lessons to be drawn.
One might be tempted to dismiss lessons learned from what happened as long ago as 1980, when many of today's mutual-fund managers had not even graduated from elementary school. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was below 900, for example, when on June 30, 1980, the Hulbert Financial Digest first constructed model portfolios according to investment newsletters' advice. Ninety-day Treasury bills carried a nearly 11% interest rate.
But certain investment truths are timeless enough to transcend the year-to-year, or even decade-to-decade, cycles of the various financial markets.
Lesson #1: Returns in excess of 20% to 25% annualized are unsustainable.
Take the investment newsletter at the top of the Hulbert Financial Digest's rankings for performance over the last 27 years: The Prudent Speculator, currently edited by John Buckingham. The newsletter's return since 1980 works out to 19.2% annualized.
Lest you conclude that this simply shows that newsletters aren't able to produce the returns that others in the advisory arena can, bear in mind that the Prudent Speculator's return actually is slightly ahead of the two best-performing equity mutual funds over the last 27 years. CGM Capital Development Fund, for example, has produced a 17.4% annualized return over the same period, while Fidelity Magellan has gained 16.3% annualized.
To be sure, Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, has outperformed the best-performing newsletter and mutual funds. Since 1980, the net asset value of Berkshire Hathaway has grown at an annualized rate of around 22%.
Note carefully that this lesson that I draw doesn't mean that no one is able to produce returns in excess of 25% in any given year. But no one adviser produces returns this large on a regular basis.
Every newsletter among those that I monitor that has ever gained more than 100% in any given year has suffered through other years in which it produced big losses. Clearly, regression to the mean is a powerful force in the investment advisory arena.
Lesson #2: There is more than one road to riches
When I started tracking investment newsletters on June 30, 1980, I thought my research would provide answers to what previously had proven to be intractable investment questions:
• Is fundamental analysis better than technical analysis?
• Is successful market timing possible?
• Is buy-and-hold better than in-and-out trading?
Twenty-seven years later, I am no closer to answering these questions.
But one thing has changed. I now believe that it is good news that these questions do not get answered once and for all.
After all, if there were only one road to riches, it would get awfully crowded.
Consider the multiplicity of approaches that are represented by the newsletters whose model portfolios, according to the Hulbert Financial Digest, have made the most money over the last 27 years.
At the top of the list is a newsletter that advocates the long-term buying and holding of good quality stocks. The average holding period of positions in the first of this newsletter's model portfolios is nearly six years. Neither market timing nor technical analysis plays an apparent role.
But consider the second-place newsletter. Its approach involves a combination of both fundamental and technical analysis, as well as market timing. The average holding period of its recommended stocks is less than six months. And in third and fourth place are newsletters whose approaches are based exclusively on technical analysis.
It is difficult to think of a group of top performers with more disparate approaches.
Now look at the newsletters with the worst performances over the last 27 years. One of the poorest performers is a newsletter whose approach is primarily, if not exclusively, technical. But right above it is a newsletter that relied only on fundamental analysis. Above that one is yet another newsletter that employs a combination of both technical and fundamental analysis.
I am now inclined to believe that almost any of the major approaches to investing can -- in the right hands -- be successful. Yet in the wrong hands, those same approaches can be big disappointments.
Lesson #3: Discipline is the premier investment virtue.
A corollary of Lesson #2 leads me to this third lesson: The choice of investment approach is less important than what you or I add to the equation when following it.
What is this something else that can make all the difference between success and failure? I believe the answer is discipline.
Discipline is what keeps us from reacting impulsively and emotionally to what happens in our portfolios. It is a willingness to stick to a strategy during those temporary times it may be out of synch with the market.
Call it boring if you will. But, regardless, discipline is the key to your long-term investment success.
This is as true today as it was in 1980. And I'll bet it will be just as true 27 years from now.
Lesson #4: Past performance is a helpful guide to picking an adviser -- if it is measured over a long-enough period.
The Securities and Exchange Commission requires all investment advertising to concede that past performance is not a guarantee of future performance, but at the same time it is not the case -- as some die-hard believers in the random walk contend.
For this column, I devised a test to show where we stand in between these two extremes. My test is based on choosing a newsletter in January 2000. How would newsletters have done over the seven and one-half years since then if they had been picked according to their past performance?
I chose January 2000 because it came right before a major market turning point, and junctures as big as that constitute particularly tough challenges for systems based on past performance. It was in early 2000, of course, that the Internet bubble burst and the stock market entered into a severe bear market during which the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 38% and the Nasdaq Composite Index lost a stunning 78%.
Consider first the five newsletters that, in January 2000, had the best performance over the trailing 12 months. Four of those five newsletters still exist today, and their average return over the last seven and one-half years has been minus 2.9% on an annualized basis. The fifth of these newsletters was discontinued in mid-2002; at that time, its return since January 2000 was minus 39.6% annualized.
Contrast these dismal results with the post-2000 returns of the five newsletters that, in January 2000, were at the top of the rankings for performance since mid-1980, when the Hulbert Financial Digest first began monitoring newsletters. Over the last seven and one-half years, these five newsletters have produced an annualized return of 8.8%.
In other words, you would have improved your returns markedly in this decade if, in early 2000, you had focused on advisers with the best long-term returns as opposed to those who were playing a hot hand over the short term.
The bottom line? In my opinion, the random walkers are close to being right when performance is measured over the shorter term. But they become wrong in important ways when returns are measured over the very long term.
