Vos livres préférés (finance, développement personnel…) ?

Bonjour,
voici un résumé du livre Unconventional Success, a fondamental approach to personal investment de David Swenson qui a été chief investment officer du Yale Endowment depuis 1985 et qui pèse aujourd’hui 24milliards de dollars. C’est pour moi un des meilleurs livre sur l’investissement avec a random walk down wall street de Malkiel.

•    90% of the variability of returns stems from asset allocation, leaving 10% to security selection and market timing
o    long-term investors build portfolios with a pronounced equity bias. Equity ownership drives long term returns.
o    careful investors fashion portfolios with substantial diversification
o    sensible investors create portfolios with concern of tax considerations
•    Equity Bias: 1 dollar invested in the stock market at the outset of the nineteenth century, with all gains and dividends reinvested, grows to $8.8 million at the beginning of the twenty-first century (1802 to 2001). Jeremy Siegel’s Stocks for the long run. US stocks produce an 8.3% compound annual return from 1802 to 2001. Jeremy Siegel: 8.3%. Ibbotson: 10.4%. No other asset class possesses such an impressive record of long-term performance. Arnott’s study: out of 7.9% equity return, 5% come from dividends, 1,4% from inflation, 0,8% from real dividend growht, and 0,6% from rising valuation. ==> importance of dividends to hitorical returns (at odds with conventional wisdom that suggests that stocks provide growth first and income second).
•    Market timing: available evidence points to a pattern of excessive allocation to recent strong performers, offset by inadequate allocation to recent weak performers for individual investors. Overweighting assets that produced strong past performance and underweighting assets that produced weak performance provides a poor recipe for pleasing prospective results. Indeed, market exhibit mean-reverting behavior, a tendency for good performance to follow bad and bad performance to follow good. Investors who fail to rebalance their portfolios to long-term targets end up with outsized exposure to recently appreciated assets that prove most vulnerable to poor future results.
•    For the investment community as a whole, security selection plays a return-reducing role in investment performance.
•    The expectation that after retirement, an individual will be in a lower tax bracket contains important implications for current financial planning
•    A well diversified, equity-oriented portfolio: 30% US equity, 15% foreign developed equity, 5% emerging market equity, 20% real estate, 15% US treasury bonds, 15% US treasury inflation-protected securities
•    Unanticipated deflation boosts bonds, while undermining stocks. US treasury bonds provide a unique form of portfolio diversification, serving as a hedge against financial accidents and unanticipated deflation. No other asset comes close to matching the diversifying power created by long-term, noncallable, default-free, full-faith and credit obligations of the US government.
•    Diversification = to reduce risk, not a tactic to chase perfomance
•    Some measure of foreign exchange exposure adds to portfolio diversification
•    Ibbotson associates: stocks returns = 10,4%, government bonds return = 5,4%. Real estate returns = 5,4+2,5  = 7,9%. Real estate sits somewhere betwee, stocks and bonds in risk and return characteristics.
•    For individual investors, publically traded real estate securities generally provide reasonably low-cost exposure to relatively high-quality pools of real estate asset. Unfortunatelly, privately offered retail real estate partnerships (SCPI) provide exposure to real estate at such obscenely high cost that the individual investor stands no chance of earning fair returns. ==> Gaining real estate exposure through public securities makes the most sense.
•    Bond (corporate bonds) investors can expect more bad news than good on credit conditions. (la gaussienne va moins loin dans le positive upside que pour les equities)
•    Sensible investors avoid corporate debt, because credit risk and callability undermine the ability of fixed-income holdings to provide portfolio protection in times of financial or economic disruption.
•    Since improving credit fundamentals frequently go hand in hand with rallying stock prices, investors face better odds by owning unlimited-upside stocks as opposed to constrained-potential bonds.
•    Junk bonds (high yield): a poor choice. Magnified credit risk, greater illiquidity, more valuable call options pose a triple threat to bondholders seeking high risk-adjusted returns. The relativelly high cost of junk bond financing provides incentives to stock-price-driven corporate managements to diminish the value of the bond positions in order to enhance the standing of share-owners.
•    Sensible investors avoid currency speculation. Top down (macro) bets on currencies fail to generate a reliable source of excess returns, because the factors influencing economic conditions, in general, and inerest rates, in particular, prove far too complex to predict with consistency. 
•    Leveraged buyouts: While the value added by operationally oriented partnerships may, in certain instances, overcome the burden imposed by the typical buyout fund’s generous fee structure, in aggregate, buyout investments fail to match public market alternatives. After adjusting for the higher level of risk and the greater degree of illiquidity in buyout transactions, publicly traded equity securities gain a clear advantage.
•    in the absence of truly superior  fund selection skills (or extraordiary luck), investors should stay far, far away from private equity investments. (Cambridge Associates PE funds average returns: 11.5%, while 12.2% over the same 20 year period ending in 2003 for the S&P500).
•    The large majority of buyout funds fail to add sufficient value to overcome a grossly unreasonable fee structure.
•    Buyout funds: Unless invesors command the resources necessary to identify top-quartile or even top-decile managers, results almost certainly fail to compensate for the degree of risk incured.
•    Unfortunately for investors, the promise of venture capital exceeds the reality. Over reasonably long periods of time, aggregate venture returns more or less match marketable equity returns. Therefore, venture investors fail miserably on a risk-adjusted basis.
•    Non-core asset classes provide investors with a broad range of superficially appealing but performance damaging investment alternatives.
•    Because of the enormous difficulty in identifying an engaging superior active managers, prudent investors avoid asset classes that derive returns primarily from  market-beating strategies.
•    Buying yesterday’s winners and selling yesterday’s loosers inevitably hurts tomorrow’s performance.
•    Regression to the mean, one of the most pwerful influences in the world of finance, explains the tendency for reversal of fortune.
•    Sensible investors avoid the speculative opportunity of the moment, whether promoted by a high-flying fringe operator or middle-of the road companies like Merril Lynch.
•    By emphasizing asset types and mutual funds that have done well, Schwab and Morningsar encourage investors to buy high and sell low, providing a poor recipe for wealth accumulation.
•    Sensible investors avoid fads, behaving in a disciplined independent fashion. Fidelity to asset allcoation targets requires regular purchase of the out of favor and sale of the in favor, demanding taht investors exhibit out of the mainstra, contrarian behavior.
•    The psychology of rebalancing: contrarian behavior lies at the heart of most successful investment strategies.
•    In the world of investment, failure sows the seeds of future success. The attractivelly priced, out of the favor strategy frequently provides much better prospective returns than the highly valued, of the moment alternatives. The discount applied to unloved assets enhanced expected returns, even as the premium assigned to favored assets reduces anticipated results.
•    Sensible taxable investors reach an obvious conclusion: invest in low-turnover, passively managed index funds.

The Education of a Value Investor de Guy Spier.
C’est très éclairant, l’auteur, gérant du fonds Aquamarine nous présente ses doutes, erreurs, l’évolution de sa philosophie, de sa personne. Le livre est à la limite du développement personnel, mais celui d’un value investor, passionnant. Je viens de le terminer et je dois dire que c’est la meilleure lecture que j’ai faite depuis un certain temps. A vrai dire, je l’ai lu deux fois tellement il m’a inspiré !

Pour la version vidéo, c’est ici.

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J’en profite pour signaler l’initiative de Google qui invite des auteurs et praticiens, de toutes spécialités confondues, à venir partager leur expertise dans Talks at Google.

Ici, 14 vidéos d’une heure environ avec des investisseurs, professeurs et auteurs (Pabrai, Marks, Yacktman, Damodaran…) qui viennent parler de leur livre: Investors at Google.

Merci Google.