Entries by Timothy Tien

Warren Buffett on obscene management fees

We should weigh Warren Buffett’s words carefully, given his success and wisdom.  Of course, he’s got an error rate, too, like we all do. For investors who don’t care about the volatility of their investment returns, money managers who hedge their portfolio exposures may not be a good fit, as their returns will be muted […]

Thoughts on CNBC’s Delivering Alpha quotables

Wall Street celebrity conferences such as CNBC’s Delivering Alpha are always fun.  While I find them to be roughly 60% entertainment and 30% “talking your book”, there are also some nuggets of inspiration, friction with some of my priors, and even worthwhile tweaks to my portfolio (especially hedges) on occasion. Ray Dalio of Bridgwater Associates, with […]

Eric Falkenstein’s Finding Alpha

In my old days of proprietary trading (mid-2000s), I was a voracious reader (when I wasn’t trading index or managing risk).  I’d read a couple of hundred blog posts, journal articles and the occasional research paper weekly.  One of my favorite bloggers–in those early days of blogging–was Eric Falkenstein, whom I likened to Thomas Kuhn, for finance.  Reading the […]