A century ago, life expectancy was roughly 40 years, hence all income could be consumed, as for most people, there was no need to save for retirement. Today, things have drastically changed: Life expectancy exceeds 80 years in many countries, and one should expect to live and consume many years after retirement. Thus, we have many investors with various investment horizons, where the length of the investment horizon becomes a crucial factor in determining the best investment diversification.This book analyzes the effect of the investment horizon on the optimal diversification, specifically between stocks and bonds: Should a young investor and an older investor have the same portfolio? Is it recommended to savers for retirement to change the asset allocation between stocks and bonds as they grow older, as life cycle mutual funds do in practice? Is the idiom 'stocks for the long run' backed by scientific evidence? We analyze for which horizons it is recommended to employ the popular Mean-Variance rule and for which horizons employing this rule induces an economic distortion, hence a loss to the investors. It is shown that all relevant parameters for investment choice (means, variances, and correlations) change in a non-linear way with the horizon, a fact that makes the investment horizon crucial for investment choices. Similarly, the popular Sharpe, Treynor, and Jensen performance indices vary with the assumed horizon even in the case of independence over time. To analyze all the above issues, we employ the Mean-Variance rule and Stochastic Dominance rules, as well as direct expected utility calculations.

Academic finance has had a remarkable impact on many financial services. Yet long-term investors have received curiously little guidance from academic financial economists. Mean-variance analysis, developed almost fifty years ago, has provided a basic paradigm for portfolio choice. This approach usefully emphasizes the ability of diversification to reduce risk, but it ignores several critically important factors. Most notably, the analysis is static; it assumes that investors care only about risks to wealth one period ahead. However, many investors—-both individuals and institutions such as charitable foundations or universities—-seek to finance a stream of consumption over a long lifetime. In addition, mean-variance analysis treats financial wealth in isolation from income. Long-term investors typically receive a stream of income and use it, along with financial wealth, to support their consumption. At the theoretical level, it is well understood that the solution to a long-term portfolio choice problem can be very different from the solution to a short-term problem. Long-term investors care about intertemporal shocks to investment opportunities and labor income as well as shocks to wealth itself, and they may use financial assets to hedge their intertemporal risks. This should be important in practice because there is a great deal of empirical evidence that investment opportunities—-both interest rates and risk premia on bonds and stocks—-vary through time. Yet this insight has had little influence on investment practice because it is hard to solve for optimal portfolios in intertemporal models. This book seeks to develop the intertemporal approach into an empirical paradigm that can compete with the standard mean-variance analysis. The book shows that long-term inflation-indexed bonds are the riskless asset for long-term investors, it explains the conditions under which stocks are safer assets for long-term than for short-term investors, and it shows how labor income influences portfolio choice. These results shed new light on the rules of thumb used by financial planners. The book explains recent advances in both analytical and numerical methods, and shows how they can be used to understand the portfolio choice problems of long-term investors.

Stocks for the Long Run set a precedent as the most complete and irrefutable case for stock market investment ever written. Now, this bible for long-term investing continues its tradition with a fourth edition featuring updated, revised, and new material that will keep you competitive in the global market and up-to-date on the latest index instruments. Wharton School professor Jeremy Siegel provides a potent mix of new evidence, research, and analysis supporting his key strategies for amassing a solid portfolio with enhanced returns and reduced risk. In a seamless narrative that incorporates the historical record of the markets with the realities of today's investing environment, the fourth edition features: A new chapter on globalization that documents how the emerging world will soon overtake the developed world and how it impacts the global economy An extended chapter on indexing that includes fundamentally weighted indexes, which have historically offered better returns and lower volatility than their capitalization-weighted counterparts Insightful analysis on what moves the market and how little we know about the sources of big market changes A sobering look at behavioral finance and the psychological factors that can lead investors to make irrational investment decisions A major highlight of this new edition of Stocks for the Long Run is the chapter on global investing. With the U.S. stock market currently holding less than half of the world's equity capitalization, it's important for investors to diversify abroad. This updated edition shows you how to create an “efficient portfolio” that best balances asset allocation in domestic and foreign markets and provides thorough coverage on sector allocation across the globe. Stocks for the Long Run is essential reading for every investor and advisor who wants to fully understand the market-including its behavior, past trends, and future influences-in order to develop a prosperous long-term portfolio that is both safe and secure.

This fully updated third edition is devoted to the analysis of various Stochastic Dominance (SD) decision rules. It discusses the pros and cons of each of the alternate SD rules, the application of these rules to various research areas like statistics, agriculture, medicine, measuring income inequality and the poverty level in various countries, and of course, to investment decision-making under uncertainty. The book features changes and additions to the various chapters, and also includes two completely new chapters. One deals with asymptotic SD and the relation between FSD and the maximum geometric mean (MGM) rule (or the maximum growth portfolio). The other new chapter discusses bivariate SD rules where the individual’s utility is determined not only by his own wealth, but also by his standing relative to his peer group. Stochastic Dominance: Investment Decision Making under Uncertainty, 3rd Ed. covers the following basic issues: the SD approach, asymptotic SD rules, the mean-variance (MV) approach, as well as the non-expected utility approach. The non-expected utility approach focuses on Regret Theory (RT) and mainly on prospect theory (PT) and its modified version, cumulative prospect theory (CPT) which assumes S-shape preferences. In addition to these issues the book suggests a new stochastic dominance rule called the Markowitz stochastic dominance (MSD) rule corresponding to all reverse-S-shape preferences. It also discusses the concept of the multivariate expected utility and analyzed in more detail the bivariate expected utility case. From the reviews of the second edition: "This book is an economics book about stochastic dominance. ... is certainly a valuable reference for graduate students interested in decision making under uncertainty. It investigates and compares different approaches and presents many examples. Moreover, empirical studies and experimental results play an important role in this book, which makes it interesting to read." (Nicole Bäuerle, Mathematical Reviews, Issue 2007 d)

"The underlying notion in this volume is to spotlight, critically assess, and illuminate Paul A. Samuelson's extraordinarily voluminous, diverse, and groundbreaking contributions that encompass the entire field of economics through the lens of most eminent scholars. All this in honor of his ninetieth birthday celebrated on May 15, 2005 in Fairmont Hotel in Boston in the company of hundreds of scholars and their spouses."--Pref.

This unique study focuses on how the endowment assets of Oxford and Cambridge colleges are invested. Despite their shared missions, each interprets its investment objective differently, often resulting in remarkably dissimilar strategies. This thought provoking study provides new insights for all investors with a long-term investment horizon.

The new paradigm for investing and building wealth in the twenty-first century. The Future for Investors reveals new strategies that take advantage of the dramatic changes and opportunities that will appear in world markets. Jeremy Siegel, one of the world’s top investing experts, has taken a long, hard, and in-depth look at the market and the stocks that investors should acquire to build long-term wealth. His surprising finding is that the new technologies, expanding industries, and fast-growing countries that stockholders relentlessly seek in the market often lead to poor returns. In fact, growth itself can be an investment trap, luring investors into overpriced stocks and overly competitive industries. The Future for Investors shatters conventional wisdom and provides a framework for picking stocks that will be long-term winners. While technological innovation spurs economic growth, it has not been kind to investors. Instead, companies that have marketed tried-and-true products for decades in slow-growth or even declining industries have superior returns to firms that develop “the bold and the new.” Industry sectors many regard as dinosaurs—railroads and oil companies, for example—have actually beat the market. Professor Siegel presents these strategies within the context of the coming shift in global economic power and the demographic age wave that will sweep the United States, Europe, and Japan. Contrary to the popular belief that these economic and demographic trends doom investors to poor returns, Professor Siegel explains the True New Economy and how to take advantage of the coming surge in invention, discovery, and economic growth. The faster the world changes, the more important it is for investors to heed the lessons of the past and find the tried-and-true companies that can help you beat the market and prosper in the years ahead.