{"id":26008,"date":"2011-12-14T11:20:32","date_gmt":"2011-12-14T16:20:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/fx\/?p=26008"},"modified":"2011-12-14T11:20:32","modified_gmt":"2011-12-14T16:20:32","slug":"the-father-of-modern-investing-is-a-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/2011\/12\/14\/the-father-of-modern-investing-is-a-fraud\/","title":{"rendered":"The Father of Modern Investing&#8230; Is a Fraud?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h4><a href=\"http:\/\/insideinvestingdaily.com\" target=\"_blank\">Written by Andrew Snyder, Editorial Director, Inside Investing Daily, insideinvestingdaily.com<\/a><\/h4>\n<p><strong><em>The so-called experts will say one thing&#8230; but do another. If you want to be a successful investor, you need to know one thing. They&#8217;re all liars.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>You can&#8217;t buy a degree in finance without sitting through a few lectures on the father of modern investing. We&#8217;re told Harry Markowitz is a genius. His Modern Portfolio Theory was supposed to give us more return with less risk&#8230; Wall Street&#8217;s version of paradise.<\/p>\n<p>I had a professor who would blush anytime his name was mentioned.<\/p>\n<p>The only problem is &#8212; and it&#8217;s a big one &#8212; Markowitz doesn&#8217;t use his own theory. He&#8217;s got a chapter in every one of my old textbooks&#8230; yet even he won&#8217;t put it into practice.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s like a president who wins a Peace Prize and drops bombs on Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan&#8230; crazy, huh?<\/p>\n<p>In a decade-old story for <em>Money<\/em> magazine, Markowitz spilled the beans.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I have half of my money in stocks, and I&#8217;ve got half of my money in bonds,&#8221; he said. It was almost the exact opposite of the theory he spewed across academia.<\/p>\n<p>A year later, <em>The<\/em> <em>Wall Street Journal <\/em>called him on his contradiction. His response was laughable&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I visualized my grief if the stock market went way up and I wasn&#8217;t in it &#8212; or if it went way down and I was completely in it,&#8221; he said. &#8220;My intention was to minimize my future regret.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>One word&#8230; fraud.<\/p>\n<p>This guy virtually invented the business plan of every financial advisory firm in the country, yet when it comes to his own money&#8230; it&#8217;s do as I say not as I do.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks to Markowitz, we hear it all the time: Diversify.<\/p>\n<p>But what does it mean? Should we follow the steps of this so-called expert and split our financial fate 50\/50? Or should we step outside the convention and let the academics and shysters have their neat little pie charts?<\/p>\n<p>You know my answer.<\/p>\n<p>Diversification does not mean grab a handful of blue chips, a few small caps and a couple of stiff bonds. All we have to do is look back three years to see the fallacy in that plan.<\/p>\n<p>What we need to do is diversify our strategy.<\/p>\n<p>Stocks and bonds are great. I own a bunch.<\/p>\n<p>But I also have a stake in a small business. I get royalty income. And I own land. In other words, if Wall Street crumbles&#8230; life goes on.<\/p>\n<p>If you are a <em>Safe Haven Investor<\/em> subscriber, you already know why I like land so much (you also know the best place in the world to buy it right now).<\/p>\n<p>Land is one of the easiest and safest ways to diversify. With one transaction, you can own a low-risk asset anywhere in the world&#8230; in any currency.<\/p>\n<p>In western Iowa, for example, a new record was broken last Wednesday. A 74-acre chunk of farmland sold for $20,000 per acre&#8230; the highest price yet.<\/p>\n<p>The same day, one landowner sold a parcel for $10,450 per acre&#8230; twice what he paid for it just two years ago.<\/p>\n<p>If you followed in the steps of Markowitz &#8212; an equal cut of stocks and bonds &#8212; you&#8217;re missing out on what is one of the largest opportunities of the next four years.<\/p>\n<p>The bottom line to all of this is you have been fed one lie after another. On Wall Street and in Washington, they&#8217;re preaching&#8230; but they ain&#8217;t practicin&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>They tell us (and sometimes force us) to do one thing, while they do the opposite. Once you understand their game, you can get out of it.<\/p>\n<p>Tomorrow, we&#8217;ll blow the cover on the ETF scam.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Editor&#8217;s Note: <\/strong>The Associated Press just released a story that shows why 2011 was one of the best years ever for American farmers. Their profits spiked by nearly 30%. With an opportunity this big, I&#8217;m willing to bet your local senator couldn&#8217;t resist the temptation. <a title=\"Follow the link\" href=\"https:\/\/reports.insidersstrategygroup.com\/ISGSHIRule37C\/WSHIMB15\/\" target=\"_blank\">To see what I&#8217;m talking about&#8230; follow the link.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Written by Andrew Snyder, Editorial Director, Inside Investing Daily, insideinvestingdaily.com The so-called experts will say one thing&#8230; but do another. If you want to be a successful investor, you need to know one thing. They&#8217;re all liars. You can&#8217;t buy a degree in finance without sitting through a few lectures on the father of modern &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/2011\/12\/14\/the-father-of-modern-investing-is-a-fraud\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Father of Modern Investing&#8230; Is a Fraud?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26008\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}