Investors Need to Do Homework

This week's Barron's (page L6) has an Oppenheimer ad featuring revenue weighted etfs. The ad implies that cap weighted etfs are out of date and weighting holdings by other measures are more sophisticated. They present revenue weighted efts. They say that weighting by revenue is "the smarter way to weight the index".

One example they give has the ticker symbol RWL.

They provide a website to provide info:

Oppenheimer Revenue Weighted ETFs

Click on this page and scroll down to come to "LargeCapRevenueETF" and click on it to get performance on RWL:

What do you think when you see this little table? You may think that the ETF, RWL, matches the market but this isn't the case. These are returns based on net asset values and market prices of the ETF, which over the longer term will be close as they are in the Table.

What is really of interest is how performance has been versus the old stodgy market cap weighted S&P 500. To get that you have to click the "Performance History..." link below the Table.

This tells an interesting story as shown below:

Note the 3 year average annualized return of 9.61% on the cap weighted S&P versus the 8.31% on the touted  "sophisticated" RWL.

The longer term 5 year superior results of 15.04% versus 14.63% on the S&P 500 indicate that RWL got off to a great start. Many times investors chase the hottest concept and then run into a brick wall. For those who jumped in 3 years ago this was the case.

Actually though many investors don't do their homework and are happy with their performance in an up market. In this case they be satisfied with 8.32% and not even realize they would have gotten 9.60% with a basic cap weighted index.

Choosing between these ETFs is challenging to say the least. I tend to stick with cap weighted as a personal choice. I just think the "disrupter" type of environment we are in at the present favors the larger companies. But frankly this could be changing as the rise in interest rates may be leading to a significant rotation.

The bottom line is that investors should dig in and do a bit of research to really understand their investment portfolio.

Portis ripped off

I know this is kind of gross and probably gets me in trouble with the SPCA but it is what happens to copperheads who come too close to my cabin.

Sadly, Clinton Portis the great Redskin running back, considered doing the same to his financial advisors who ripped him off to the tune of $11 million!

Clinton Contemplated Murder (USA Today)

This too often sad tale of professional athletes is difficult to get our head around. The clowns who ripped off Portis, who is one of my all time favorite athletes, were actually registered with the NFL Players Assoc. Financial Advisor program! Doesn't anyone know what's going on? These advisors are dangerous. They are absolutely top of the line at self promotion but have a reptilian part of their brain that focuses like a laser beam on separating people from their hard earned dollars.

Look I can help. I suggest modestly to put aside $2 million and invest it in low cost Funds. Such an approach would have grown to over $8 million over the last 20 years with an allocation of 65% stocks/35% bonds.  I would charge $6,000/year (0.3%) to manage the portfolio. $2 million generates $80,000/year for life. Most people can live comfortably on $80,000/year in retirement.
I'm glad that Portis's friends talked him out of killing the advisors but wish that advisors of this ilk would serve serious time in the slammer.

Don't think these kinds of advisors can't find the average investor . They can. As Woody Guthrie said,  Some will rob you with a six-gun, And Some with a fountain Pen.