Book Review: Too Smart for Our Own Good

by Nick Ronalds, CFA Institute Enterprising Investor, March 4, 2021: Reviewer Nick Ronalds said the core thesis of Bruce Jacobs’s book Too Smart for Our Own Good: Ingenious Investment Strategies, Illusions of Safety, and Market Crashes “should be taken to heart not only by investment professionals but by all investors... Free-lunch promises, complexity, opacity, and excessive leverage have too often combined to toxic effect. Financial professionals in particular could benefit greatly from studying the market crises analyzed in this book and the key lessons to be drawn from them.” Ronalds also chronicled Bruce’s long history of pushing back against flawed investment theories, noting his head-to-head debates with the creators of portfolio insurance in the 1980s, his 1999 book Capital Ideas and Market Realities: Option Replication, Investor Behavior, and Stock Market Crashes, and his role in creating the National Institute of Finance, a predecessor of the Financial Stability Oversight Council.

Experts on ESG, Factor Performance Win Bernstein Fabozzi/Jacobs Levy Award

by Rob Kozlowski, Pensions & Investments, February 2, 2021: Subscribers of the Journal of Portfolio Management recognized two articles as Best Article for the 22nd Annual Bernstein Fabozzi/Jacobs Levy Awards: “Divergent ESG Ratings” by Elroy Dimson, Paul Marsh, and Mike Staunton, and “Alpha vs. Alpha: Selection, Timing, and Factor Exposures from Different Factor Models” by Ananth Madhavan, Aleksander Sobczyk, and Andrew Ang... “Dimson, Marsh, and Staunton’s article provides valuable information for institutional investors seeking to incorporate environmental, social, and governance concerns into their portfolio selection process,” said Bruce Jacobs, principal and co-founder of Jacobs Levy Equity Management. Jacobs added that Madhavan, Sobczyk, and Ang’s winning article “adds to our understanding of factor performance in active portfolios.”

Stanford Professors Win Nobel Award for Research on Auctions

by James Comtois, Pensions & Investments, October 14, 2020: Paul R. Milgrom and Robert B. Wilson were awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for their work on auction systems. In the article, Bruce Jacobs observes that “their insights have been applied around the world to the sale of everything from airport... landing slots to government bonds.” Jacobs added that “with Lawrence Glosten, Milgrom applied work on auction markets to explain how market makers create a bid-ask spread (different prices for buyers and sellers) to recoup losses from trades with informed traders who may have superior information.”