Investment Advisor Monitoring Articles

Verify

When to Fire an Investment Advisor

Question: When, if ever, should a business manager recommend that their client fire their investment advisor? Answer: It will be time for your client to part ways with their investment...
How did you do this year

Duty to Monitor the Total Return of a Trust Portfolio

Statutory Considerations: Section 2(c)(5) of the Uniform Prudent Investor Acts directs that “Among that a trustee shall consider in investing and managing trust assets are… the expected total return from...
trustee duty to balance risk and return

ERISA §404(a)(1)(B) re Duty to Balance Risk and Return

Trustees are required to make hard investment decisions. They are to take into consideration the risk of loss and the opportunity for gain associated with each particular investment or investment...
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Does Size Matter?

Do "big investors" have better investment results than “small investors”? Many business managers expect that their wealthy clients with large portfolios ($25m+) should have better returns because the clients have...
Duty to Balance Risk and Return

A Business Manager's Duty to Monitor the Risk and Return of their Clients' Investment Portfolios

The Problem: You are a business manager and it is either explicitly or implicitly the case that you are responsible for monitoring the activities of the investment managers that have...
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Trust But Verify: Do Private Equity and Hedge Funds Deliver Superior Risk-adjusted Returns?

For several decades, the investment industry has promoted the virtues of hedge funds and private equity funds for large instructional investors and ultra high net worth individuals. But over the...
RiskApocalypse

UPIA §2(b) – Duty to Monitor Risk and Return

The Duty The preamble to the Uniform Prudent Investor Act notes, “The tradeoff in all investing between risk and return is identified as the fiduciary's central consideration.”  For most trustees...
Lemming

A trustee’s duty to establish return objectives or “Don’t be a lemming”

Duty to Establish a Target Return:  Section 2(b) of the Uniform Prudent Investor Act directs, “A trustee's investment and management decisions… must be evaluated… as a part of an overall...
Wading Pool

Is your client’s investment advisor better than average?

Vanguard vs. Client: The Vanguard LifeStrategy Moderate Growth Fund (VSMGX) is (1) well diversified (60% global stocks and 40% bonds), (2) inexpensive (0.15% per year), (3) has a long and...
Risk-1

A Trustee’s duty to monitor the risk within the trust portfolio

Duty to Establish Risk Expectations:  Section 2(b) of the Uniform Prudent Investor Act directs that “A trustee's investment and management decisions respecting individual assets must be evaluated not in isolation but in...