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Investing money in a brokerage account is a smart financial move, but many people don’t realize just how powerful investing is as a wealth-building tool. In fact, buying assets that provide you with reasonable returns is one of the keys to achieving financial independence for the vast majority of people. To understand just why and how investing can be helpful, let’s take a look at what happens if you invest $1,000 a month for a period of 20 years..….Story continues…
By: Christy Bieber
Source: The Globe & Mail
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Critics:
Investment management (sometimes referred to more generally as asset management) is the professional asset management of various securities, including shareholdings, bonds, and other assets, such as real estate, to meet specified investment goals for the benefit of investors. Investors may be institutions, such as insurance companies, pension funds, corporations, charities, educational establishments, or private investors, either directly via investment contracts/mandates .
Collective investment schemes like mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, or Real estate investment trusts. Venture the board includes expertly overseeing speculation portfolios for the benefit of clients to accomplish their monetary objectives. This incorporates key resource designation, developing broadened portfolios, and effectively observing execution while relieving gambles.
Speculation administrators use exploration and examination to recognize valuable open doors and pursue informed choices, guaranteeing portfolios line up with client targets and hazard resilience. In addition, successful investment management requires adherence to ethical standards, compliance with regulations, and effective communication with clients.
The term investment management is often used to refer to the management of investment funds, most often specializing in private and public equity, real assets, alternative assets, and/or bonds. The more generic term asset management may refer to management of assets not necessarily primarily held for investment purposes. Most investment management clients can be classified as either institutional or retail/advisory, depending on if the client is an institution or private individual/family trust.
Investment managers who specialize in advisory or discretionary management on behalf of (normally wealthy) private investors may often refer to their services as money management or portfolio management within the context of “private banking“. Wealth management by financial advisors takes a more holistic view of a client, with allocations to particular asset management strategies.
The term fund manager, or investment adviser in the United States, refers to both a firm that provides investment management services and to the individual who directs fund management decisions. The five largest asset managers are holding 22.7 percent of the externally held assets. Nevertheless, the market concentration, measured via the Herfindahl-Hirschmann Index, could be estimated at 173.4 in 2018, showing that the industry is not very concentrated.
The business of investment has several facets, the employment of professional fund managers, research (of individual assets and asset classes), dealing, settlement, marketing, internal auditing, and the preparation of reports for clients. The largest financial fund managers are firms that exhibit all the complexity their size demands.
Apart from the people who bring in the money (marketers) and the people who direct investment (the fund managers), there are compliance staff (to ensure accord with legislative and regulatory constraints), internal auditors of various kinds (to examine internal systems and controls), financial controllers (to account for the institutions’ own money and costs), computer experts, and “back office” employees (to track and record transactions and fund valuations for up to thousands of clients per institution).
Key problems include:
- Revenue is directly linked to market valuations, so a major fall in asset prices can cause a precipitous decline in revenues relative to costs.
- Above-average fund performance is difficult to sustain, and clients may not be patient during times of poor performance.
- Successful fund managers are expensive and may be headhunted by competitors.
- Above-average fund performance appears to be dependent on the unique skills of the fund manager; however, clients are loath to stake their investments on the ability of a few individuals- they would rather see firm-wide success, attributable to a single philosophy and internal discipline.
- Analysts who generate above-average returns often become sufficiently wealthy that they avoid corporate employment in favor of managing their personal portfolios.
Institutions often control huge shareholdings. In most cases, they are acting as fiduciary agents rather than principals (direct owners). The owners of shares theoretically have great power to alter the companies via the voting rights the shares carry and the consequent ability to pressure managements, and if necessary out-vote them at annual and other meetings.
In practice, the ultimate owners of shares often do not exercise the power they collectively hold (because the owners are many, each with small holdings); financial institutions (as agents) sometimes do. Institutional shareholders should exercise more active influence over the companies in which they hold shares (e.g., to hold managers to account, to ensure Board’s effective functioning). Such action would add a pressure group to those (the regulators and the Board) overseeing management.
However, there is the problem of how the institution should exercise this power. One way is for the institution to decide, the other is for the institution to poll its beneficiaries. Assuming that the institution polls, should it then: (i) Vote the entire holding as directed by the majority of votes cast? (ii) Split the vote (where this is allowed) according to the proportions of the vote? (iii) Or respect the abstainers and only vote the respondents’ holdings?
The price signals generated by large active managers holding or not holding the stock may contribute to management change. For example, this is the case when a large active manager sells his position in a company, leading to (possibly) a decline in the stock price, but more importantly a loss of confidence by the markets in the management of the company, thus precipitating changes in the management team.
Some institutions have been more vocal and active in pursuing such matters; for instance, some firms believe that there are investment advantages to accumulating substantial minority shareholdings (i.e. 10% or more) and putting pressure on management to implement significant changes in the business. In some cases, institutions with minority holdings work together to force management change.
Perhaps more frequent is the sustained pressure that large institutions bring to bear on management teams through persuasive discourse and PR. On the other hand, some of the largest investment managers—such as BlackRock and Vanguard—advocate simply owning every company, reducing the incentive to influence management teams.
A reason for this last strategy is that the investment manager prefers a closer, more open, and honest relationship with a company’s management team than would exist if they exercised control; allowing them to make a better investment decision.
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