Victor Haghani: Missing Billionaires w/ ex-LTCM partner & Elm Wealth Founder
Oct 29, 2023
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Victor Haghani, ex-LTCM partner, discusses missing billionaires and wealth management. Topics include active vs passive investing, book 'The Missing Billionaires', multigenerational fortune challenges, asset allocation, position sizing, and maintaining wealth. Insightful exploration of financial decisions and managing wealth for long-term stability.
We should focus on proper wealth management practices to preserve and grow multi-generational fortunes.
Investors need education on systematic risk management and sizing decisions in their investment strategies.
Dynamic asset allocation is crucial in adjusting equity exposure over market cycles to optimize risk-adjusted returns.
Understanding diminishing marginal utility of wealth is essential for making prudent risk management decisions.
Deep dives
The Paradox of Missing Billionaires in Inherited Wealth
Despite historical census data showing a high number of millionaires in the US around 1900, the Forbes billionaire list struggles to find descendants of these families today. It is suggested that excessive risk-taking, poorly chosen spending policies, and lack of intergenerational wealth management may have depleted the fortunes over time.
Coin Flipping Experiment Reveals Lack of Risk Management in Finance Professionals
A coin-flipping competition with financially savvy participants highlighted a common lack of understanding in risk management and sizing decisions. Most participants placed bets without a systematic approach, demonstrating a need for education on proper risk allocation in investment strategies.
Dynamic Asset Allocation Considerations in a Low Expected Return Environment
In periods of low expected returns on equities relative to risk-free assets, dynamic asset allocation becomes crucial. Assessing earnings yield, inflation-protected returns, and long-term risk premiums can guide investors in adjusting their equity exposure over market cycles to optimize risk-adjusted returns and wealth preservation.
The Concept of Risk-Adjusted Returns and Preferences in Wealth Management
Assessing risk-adjusted returns entails understanding decreasing marginal utility of wealth over time, similar to the diminishing satisfaction of consuming multiple gummy bears. Preferences for risk and wealth vary among individuals, with most exhibiting a preference for stable, risk-adjusted returns over excessive risk-seeking behaviors.
Evaluation of Risk Management and Investment Preferences through a Life Satisfaction Lens
Analyzing investment decisions and risk preferences through the lens of life satisfaction and wealth utility reveals the importance of risk-adjusted returns. Understanding diminishing marginal utility of wealth and applying prudent risk management strategies are essential for long-term wealth preservation and financial well-being.
Risk Perception and Loss Aversion in Decision Making
Our perception of losses and gains differs, impacting how we assess risk. The concave curves mapping wealth to utility demonstrate a decrease in happiness relative to wealth gains. Classic theories highlight our risk aversion due to decreasing marginal utility of wealth. While prospect theory notes anomalous behaviors in small gambles, emphasizing the complexity of decision-making under uncertainty.
Sizing Decisions and Optimal Spending for Long-Term Wealth Management
Sizing decisions can make or break investments, as seen in the LTCM case where good trades were undermined by poor sizing choices. Decisions about spending in investments should consider risk-adjusted returns, time preferences, and degree of risk aversion. The optimal spending rate is typically lower than expected returns to mitigate potential losses and sustain wealth over the long term.
Victor Haghani – Missing Billionaires w/ ex-LTCM partner & Elm Wealth Founder
Victor Haghani started his career in 1984 at Salomon Brothers, where he became an MD in the bond arbitrage group run by
John Meriwether. Victor was a co-founding partner of LTCM. In 2011, Victor founded Elm Wealth to help clients, including his own family, manage and preserve their wealth with a thoughtful, research-based, and cost-effective approach that covers not just investment management but also broader decisions about wealth and finances.
In his TEDx talk, Where Are All the Billionaires and Why Should We Care? Victor shares his unique perspective on active versus passive investing. Victor has been a prolific contributor to the
academic and practitioner finance literature. He is a co-author of the book, The Missing Billionaires: A Guide to Better Financial Decisions, which has just been released and is available on amazon and most other book sellers.
We talk about Victor’s childhood, upbringing, and fascinating career. He shares his thoughts about managing his own wealth, and what he learned in the process. We focus on the missing
billionaires as he calls them in his Ted talk and his book – given the fortunes that existed a hundred years ago, we should have many more billionaire inheritors and we don’t – it’s the ages old challenges of staying rich, and keeping a multi-generational fortune. We discuss position sizing, and asset allocation, how much should be invested in stocks. Victor shares some
surprising learnings from a coin flipping competition study.
Stay tuned until the end if your are curious to hear Victor share a story of his very last Liar’s Poker hand at Salomon Brothers…
https://www.amazon.com/Missing-Billionaires-Better-Financial-Decisions/dp/1119747910/
www.elmwealth.com
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