The purpose of finance is to enable business to acquire the ownership of capital instruments before it has saved the funds to buy and pay for them. The logic used by business in investing is things that will pay for themselves is not today available to the 95% born without capital. Most of us owe instead of own. And the less the economy needs our labor, the less able we are to "save" our way to capital ownership.
Even fans of actively managed funds often concede that most other investors would be better off in index funds. But buoyed by abundant self-confidence, these folks aren't about to give up on actively managed funds themselves. A tad delusional? I think so. Picking the best-performing funds is 'like trying to predict the dice before you roll them down the craps table,' says an investment adviser in Boca Raton, FL. 'I can't do it. The public can't do it. '
Funds are low again, hallelujah! That means God trusts us and is willing to leave His reputation in our hands.
The deeper one delves, the worse things look for actively managed funds.
I have never been a fan of bond funds. Unlike a direct investment in an individual bond that you can hold to maturity and be assured you will get your principal back (assuming no default), a fund has no finite maturity date and most funds are actively traded.
It's my guess that something like 5% of GDP goes to money management and itsattendant friction. I define it broadly - annuities, incentive pay, all trading, etc. Nobody else has used figures that high, but that's my guess. Worst of all, the people doing this are among the best and the brightest. Hundreds and thousands of engineers, etc. are going into hedge funds and investment banking. That is not an intelligent allocation of the brainpower of the civilization.
A government institution called the Finnish Film Foundation funds filmmaking there, and I wrote several screenplays but never got any money. They were sent back to me, and they said that they were too commercial for them.
It proved to be pretty impossible to get funds for a feature film in Finland. It's still small, but the film industry was miniscule at that point in the early '80s.
You don’t have to sleep with prostitutes or take drugs in order to have a relationship with organized crime. They affect our bank accounts. They affect our communications, our pension funds. They even affect the food that we eat and our governments.
The normal expectancy of the average investor - for example, the pension funds of AT&T or IBM - is 6% for a long time.
There's no doubt that Iran funds and supplies Hamas with weapons.
If you need to raise funds from donors, you need to study them, respect them, and build everything you do around them.
For the first time in the history of Bihar, I provided a stable government. Despite being denied funds by the Centre, Bihar survived on its resources. I provided pucca dwellings to half a million Dalit families.
Managed funds are astonishingly tax-inefficient.
The only issue cash presents you is the independence of not stressing about funds.
Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny should take a few pointers from the mutual-fund industry. All three are trying to pull off elaborate hoaxes. But while Santa and the bunny suffer the derision of eight year olds everywhere, actively-managed stock funds still have an ardent following among otherwise clear-thinking adults. This continued loyalty amazes me. Reams of statistics prove that most of the fund industry's stock pickers fail to beat the market.
Well, I was getting a lot of money then, and I wasn't getting any Hollywood films, so I just did those. I'd always do a play in between. Whenever I ran low on funds, I'd always rush off to do a movie somewhere
In my opinion, the president is right to address future funding, even though Social Security will show a surplus through 2018 and will not run out of funds until 2042.
A decade ago, I really did believe that the average investor could do it himself. I was wrong. I've come to the sad conclusion that only a tiny minority, at most one percent, are capable of pulling it off. Heck, if Helen Young Hayes, Robert Sanborn, Julian Robertson, and the nation's largest pension funds can't get it right, what chance does John Q. Investor have?
I do believe if one keeps busy it's very good for a person. In fact, people are always rushing into retirement and we read in Europe that people there are talking about their retirement age and moving it to 67 or something. Well, back when they started retirement funds and everything, the average age was 70 or 60, and then all of a sudden now it's 80, and so. And so you keep in shape, you keep yourself mentally in shape. And if you keep yourself mentally in shape, chances are physically it will follow suit.