Career
Investing advice
In his books Stocks for the Long Run (1998) and The Future for Investors (2005), Siegel outlines his investing theories and advice.
He recommends against holding bonds, arguing their long-term performance tends to be negative after inflation. Siegel's position on bonds has been disputed, with critics proposing his data is flawed due to use of unreliable information from earlier sources. [2] [3]
For stocks, Siegel recommends relying primarily or exclusively on index funds when possible, as active management tends to underperform market averages over long periods. (When he wrote in the late 1990s and early 2000's, index funds were not necessarily available in 401k plans but have become more popular since then.) He is not opposed to holding a small portion of the portfolio in single stocks, provided their selection is prudent.
For all stocks or investment options, Siegel advise following a "D-I-V" mnemonic as a guideline: prioritizing dividends, international, and valuation. His research found dividend-paying stocks tend to offer superior long-term performance, as they are associated with profitable mature companies that hold up well during bear markets and recessions, and are also more likely to be reasonably valued. He has endorsed the Dogs of the Dow method, of holding the highest-dividend stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Siegel recommends substantial international stock holdings, up to 40-50%, to avoid home country bias and obtain a broader variety of options. For valuation, Siegel recommends stocks or indexes that are fairly valued or undervalued while avoiding sectors that are overvalued or trendy, as they tend to offer poor long-term results. He calls this phenomenon the "growth trap" and notes that fast-growing companies, industries or economies are not necessarily good investments.
Siegel's academic research showing dividend-paying companies tend to offer superior long-term performance with lower risk has influenced the construction of indexes used for WisdomTree Investments, a provider of exchange traded funds. [4] After the dot com bubble of the late 1990s and early 2000's Siegel became somewhat skeptical of the prevailing use of market capitalization for constructing index funds, and thus helped develop fundamental indexing. [5]
Passive management is an investing strategy that tracks a market-weighted index or portfolio. Passive management is most common on the equity market, where index funds track a stock market index, but it is becoming more common in other investment types, including bonds, commodities and hedge funds.
A dividend is a distribution of profits by a corporation to its shareholders, after which the stock exchange decreases the price of the stock by the dividend to remove volatility. The market has no control over the stock price on open on the ex-dividend date, though more often than not it may open higher. When a corporation earns a profit or surplus, it is able to pay a portion of the profit as a dividend to shareholders. Any amount not distributed is taken to be re-invested in the business. The current year profit as well as the retained earnings of previous years are available for distribution; a corporation is usually prohibited from paying a dividend out of its capital. Distribution to shareholders may be in cash or, if the corporation has a dividend reinvestment plan, the amount can be paid by the issue of further shares or by share repurchase. In some cases, the distribution may be of assets.
The efficient-market hypothesis (EMH) is a hypothesis in financial economics that states that asset prices reflect all available information. A direct implication is that it is impossible to "beat the market" consistently on a risk-adjusted basis since market prices should only react to new information.
Black Monday was the global, severe and largely unexpected stock market crash on Monday, October 19, 1987. Worldwide losses were estimated at US$1.71 trillion. The severity of the crash sparked fears of extended economic instability or even a reprise of the Great Depression.
In finance, the beta is a statistic that measures the expected increase or decrease of an individual stock price in proportion to movements of the stock market as a whole. Beta can be used to indicate the contribution of an individual asset to the market risk of a portfolio when it is added in small quantity. It refers to an asset's non-diversifiable risk, systematic risk, or market risk. Beta is not a measure of idiosyncratic risk.
The equity premium puzzle refers to the inability of an important class of economic models to explain the average equity risk premium (ERP) provided by a diversified portfolio of equities over that of government bonds, which has been observed for more than 100 years. There is a significant disparity between returns produced by stocks compared to returns produced by government treasury bills. The equity premium puzzle addresses the difficulty in understanding and explaining this disparity. This disparity is calculated using the equity risk premium:
In finance, an investment strategy is a set of rules, behaviors or procedures, designed to guide an investor's selection of an investment portfolio. Individuals have different profit objectives, and their individual skills make different tactics and strategies appropriate. Some choices involve a tradeoff between risk and return. Most investors fall somewhere in between, accepting some risk for the expectation of higher returns.
A stock fund, or equity fund, is a fund that invests in stocks, also called equity securities. Stock funds can be contrasted with bond funds and money funds. Fund assets are typically mainly in stock, with some amount of cash, which is generally quite small, as opposed to bonds, notes, or other securities. This may be a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund. The objective of an equity fund is long-term growth through capital gains, although historically dividends have also been an important source of total return. Specific equity funds may focus on a certain sector of the market or may be geared toward a certain level of risk.
The Dogs of the Dow is an investment strategy popularized by Michael B. O'Higgins in a 1991 book and his Dogs of the Dow website.
The "Fed model", or "Fed Stock Valuation Model" (FSVM), is a disputed theory of equity valuation that compares the stock market's forward earnings yield to the nominal yield on long-term government bonds, and that the stock market – as a whole – is fairly valued, when the one-year forward-looking I/B/E/S earnings yield equals the 10-year nominal Treasury yield; deviations suggest over-or-under valuation.
Zvi Bodie is an American economist, author and professor. He was the Norman and Adele Barron Professor of Management at Boston University, teaching finance at Questrom for 43 years before retiring in 2015. His textbook, Investments, (with Kane and Marcus) is the market leader and is used in the certification programs of the CFA Institute and the Society of Actuaries. Bodie's work has centered on pension finance and investment strategy. He continues to do consulting work and media interviews.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to finance:
Robert James Shiller is an American economist, academic, and author. As of 2022, he served as a Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University and is a fellow at the Yale School of Management's International Center for Finance. Shiller has been a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) since 1980, was vice president of the American Economic Association in 2005, its president-elect for 2016, and president of the Eastern Economic Association for 2006–2007. He is also the co‑founder and chief economist of the investment management firm MacroMarkets LLC.
In finance, a stock market index future is a cash-settled futures contract on the value of a particular stock market index. The turnover for the global market in exchange-traded equity index futures is notionally valued, for 2008, by the Bank for International Settlements at US$130 trillion.
The risk–return spectrum is the relationship between the amount of return gained on an investment and the amount of risk undertaken in that investment. The more return sought, the more risk that must be undertaken.
Stocks for the Long Run is a book on investing by Jeremy Siegel. Its first edition was released in 1994. Its fifth edition was released on January 7, 2014. According to Pablo Galarza of Money, "His 1994 book Stocks for the Long Run sealed the conventional wisdom that most of us should be in the stock market." James K. Glassman, a financial columnist for The Washington Post, called it one of the 10 best investment books of all time.
Earnings growth is the annual compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of earnings from investments.
In finance, a stock index, or stock market index, is an index that measures the performance of a stock market, or of a subset of a stock market. It helps investors compare current stock price levels with past prices to calculate market performance.
Allan Weiss is an American financial analyst and economist who is the founder and CEO of Weiss Analytics. He is co-founder and former CEO of Case Shiller Weiss, producer of the Standard & Poor's Case–Shiller index, which was acquired by Fiserv in 2002. Weiss is also co-founder and CEO of Valshield Inc. He serves on the board and advises several real estate investment companies focussing on single family and multi-family properties.
The cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings ratio, commonly known as CAPE, Shiller P/E, or P/E 10 ratio, is a stock valuation measure usually applied to the US S&P 500 equity market. It is defined as price divided by the average of ten years of earnings, adjusted for inflation. As such, it is principally used to assess likely future returns from equities over timescales of 10 to 20 years, with higher than average CAPE values implying lower than average long-term annual average returns.
