Fifteen years ago today, New Frontier began the journey of providing state-of-the-art investment technology with institutional grade Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) for investors desiring cost-effective globally diversified core investments. Our strategies are available for tax-exempt, tax-sensitive, and income-oriented investors. The portfolios span the spectrum of systematic ris ...
Blog
The Active vs. Passive Debate
The passive/active debate continues to dominate academic and professional discourse. But the issue of performance versus cost is not well formed. Any investor should want the benefit of professional management of their savings. And the quality of that professional management often follows the old adage that you get what you are willing to pay for. New Frontier’s solution att ...
What Goes Up May Not Come Down
The law of gravity states that what goes up must come down. But the laws of economics say that investors generally are rewarded for staying invested. Stocks are hitting all-time highs right now, but what does that mean for investors? The phrase “all-time high” conjures up the image of a stock chart at its peak. But while “all-time high” is accurate in terms of describing the m ...
The Role of Single-Country ETFs in a Globally Diversified Portfolio
New Frontier’s patented investment technology, including an independently corroborated portfolio optimization algorithm and state-of-the-art rebalancing rule, allows for the creation of institutional-quality portfolio solutions that are scientifically risk-managed for clients across the risk tolerance spectrum. The successful use of any kind of optimizer for asset allocation, h ...
Essential Components of Tax-Efficient Portfolios
Many investment strategies are not appropriate for investors seeking to maximize after-tax returns. High-turnover and tactical strategies that may liquidate a portfolio inefficiently generate short-term gains, and others invest in asset classes that may be less desirable to taxable investors. Tax-sensitive strategies were marketed to overcome these limitations, but tax-efficient investing is rarely properly implemented. Typically, these tax-sensitive portfolios are merely repackaged standard portfolios with municipal bonds substituted in—trading may be limited to once per year, but equity positions remain identical.
There’s room for improvement.
Pulling Out of Volatile Markets Can Lead to Missed Upside
Recent market volatility after years of stable growth in US markets has shaken the faith of some investors. However, our analysis shows that historically, staying invested through volatile periods has provided superior returns when compared to selling when volatility rises and reinvesting later. Some of the greatest upside returns have happened shortly after volatility spikes, and investors who have pulled out have missed out on important opportunities for portfolio gains.
Finance's Wrong Turn: A Critique of 20th Century Active Management
The invention of Markowitz (1952) mean-variance (MV) optimization altered the course of 20th century finance from security valuation to portfolio risk management. The Markowitz frontier is a model of long-only institutional investment behavior representing a universal framework for asset management theory and practice. The Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) is MV preference theory based on Von Neumann and Morgenstern game theory rationality axioms. CAPM theory was instrumental in the development of a 20th century multi-trillion dollar institutional quantitative asset management industry.
Income Investing Done Right
Many investors, especially those in retirement, have a rational preference for investments that provide dividends and income at higher rates than a market portfolio of stocks or both stocks and bonds. All else being equal, many retirees prefer to live off the income generated by their portfolio rather than worrying about the timing and pricing of stock or bond sales...
A Primer on Risk and Long-Term Investing
When selecting investments, one might be tempted to select funds claiming better expected returns. The thought process is that higher average returns over time will result in greater wealth at the end of the investment period...
Intelligent Strategic Investing
For the last twenty-five years, the strategic investing mantra has been that long-term asset allocation risk policy is the single most important investment decision. Risk policy is usually defined as the stock/bond ratio of the asset allocation.[1] Many large financial intermediaries as well as financial advisors consider asset allocation risk policy...