Rick Ferri has a new book coming out that I can’t wait to read. In the meantime, here’s something he put together illustrating the three costs that investors must control if they’re going to be successful…
Figure 1: The Investment Cost Triangle with Components
Some costs in Figure 1 are easy to identify and quantify while others are not. Structural costs are generally available because most fund fees and expenses are required to be disclosed by law. However, tax costs are more difficult in that they have to be extracted from tax return data. Behavioral costs are the most elusive and difficult to quantify because there’s very little data available. It also doesn’t help that human beings are overconfident and don’t want to be reminded of behavioral shortcomings.
Read the rest, this is the important stuff – much more important than the latest macro opinions on Greece or Guernica.
1. Focus on how robust a finding is, meaning that different ways of looking at the evidence point to the same conclusion. Do the same patterns repeat in many data sets, in different countries, industries or eras?
2. Results that are Statistically Significant means it’s unlikely findings simply reflect chance. Don’t confuse this with something actually mattering.
3. Be wary of scholars using high-powered statistical techniques as a bludgeon to silence critics who are not specialists.
4. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking about an empirical finding as “right” or “wrong.”
5. Don’t mistake correlation for causation.
6. Always ask “so what?” The “so what” question is about moving beyond the internal validity of a finding to asking about its external usefulness.
