Toronto-based adviser taking advantage of rally to sell high-flying stocks and buy more of his favorite bond ETFs and DFA funds.

 

Mike Bayer considers himself a contrarian investor.

In the past few months, as stock markets soared, that sort of go-against-the-grain approach has taken center stage.

The Toronto, Canada-based adviser and president of Strategic Analysis Capital Management says he prefers to buy exchange-traded funds and mutual funds from Dimensional Fund Advisors when they’re out of favor.

“The problem most investors have is that they tend to trade too frequently and make changes in the wrong direction. They’re buying high and selling low,” said Bayer, who works with individual and institutional clients in Canada and the United States.

Since early March, SACM has been taking advantage of the rally in stocks to rebalance client portfolios. Bayer has been trimming positions in the Vanguard Emerging Markets Stock ETF (NYSE: VWO).

“Emerging markets have had a big run-up in

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Another wise guy takes pot shots at all ETFs and finds an audience in a sea of misinformation.

Yesterday, I was forwarded a blog that was published on Seeking Alpha (where we sometimes publish our own blogs). The author of the article is a certain bow-tie-wearing blogger named Neil George.

Here is a link to the blog—“Why ETFs Are A Scam”—in its entirety. It's really must-reading.

The article is so full of misleading information and flat-out factual errors that it is hard to know where to begin.

Let’s start with the first line of the email from the person who forwarded the blog to me (a friend who I know buys ETFs and works around the ETF business). He says, “This guy has some valid points.”

Unfortunately, when I forwarded it around to my email colleagues, my first line was, “This guy is a nut case.”

Because I honestly believe that George’s blog post,

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Vanguard's CIO doesn't see equities as any less appealing these days, and warns investors not to get too carried away with exotic asset classes.

 

Gus Sauter is Vanguard Group's chief investment officer. He started at the funds giant in October 1987, two weeks before global markets crashed.

In that environment, Sauter took over as head of Vanguard's quantitative equities group, which at the time consisted of only index mutual funds. Since then, the unit has expanded to include a combination of passive and active quantitative strategies. Six years ago, Sauter assumed the company's CIO duties as well.

On Wednesday, IndexUniverse.com's Managing Editor Murray Coleman caught up with the busy Vanguard executive to discuss current market conditions and trends he's watching such as the upcoming launch of the Vanguard FTSE All-World ex-US Small-Cap Index Fund.

 

IU: Is buy-and-hold investing dead?

Sauter: No, I don't think it is. In fact, it's as prudent today

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RevenueShares has launched the RevenueShares ADR Fund ETF (NYSE Arca: RTR). It's the second exchange-traded fund introduced by the revenues-focused, index-based ETF family in the past week and may bring more competition to the international developed markets (ex-U.S.) category.

The RevenueShares Financials Sector Fund (NYSE Arca: RWW) launched last Wednesday (see story here).

RTR will track the RevenueShares ADR Index, another custom index designed by the ETF company to take a revenues-based slant on a major Standard & Poor's index. The rules-driven methodology re-weights the constituent securities of the S&P ADR Index according to the revenue earned by the companies in that index, subject to certain tax diversification requirements. 

The resulting RevenueShares ADR Index contains the same securities as the S&P ADR Index, but in

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With sectors (and Financials in particular) so much in the news, I thought I'd look at the sector breakdown of various global markets.

People talk a lot about the interaction between the political economy of nation states and the performance of their markets. It is certainly true that different countries are often at different points in the economic cycle. That's one of the reasons why diversifying overseas adds low-correlated returns to a portfolio.

But there's another reason for those differences: sectors.  The sector breakdowns between regions and countries differ widely, and examining those breakdowns can help you understand why one market zigs while another market zags.

Of course, the tail wags the dog here: the sector breakdown is reflective of each region's economy, and vice-versa.  But sectors offer one easy way to gain insight into how and why one economy and market performs differently from another.

U.S. vs. The Developed

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Ever wonder why international markets perform differently from the U.S. (and each other)? Just look at the sectors.

People talk a lot about the interaction between the political economy of nation states and the performance of their markets. And it is certainly true that different countries are often at different points in the economic cycle. That's one of the reasons why diversifying overseas adds low-correlated returns to a portfolio.

But there's another reason for those differences: sectors. The sector breakdowns between regions and countries differ widely, and examining those breakdowns can help you understand why one market zigs while another market zags.

Of course, the tail wags the dog here: The sector breakdown is reflective of each region's economy, and vice versa. But sectors offer one easy way to gain insight into how and why one economy and market performs differently from another.

U.S. Vs. The Developed World

If you

...

Ever wonder why international markets perform differently from the U.S. (and each other)? Just look at the sectors.

People talk a lot about the interaction between the political economy of nation states and the performance of their markets. And it is certainly true that different countries are often at different points in the economic cycle. That's one of the reasons why diversifying overseas adds low-correlated returns to a portfolio.

But there's another reason for those differences: sectors. The sector breakdowns between regions and countries differ widely, and examining those breakdowns can help you understand why one market zigs while another market zags.

Of course, the tail wags the dog here: The sector breakdown is reflective of each region's economy, and vice versa. But sectors offer one easy way to gain insight into how and why one economy and market performs differently from another.

U.S. Vs. The Developed World

If you

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