Centennial Speaker Series: Daniel Peris on Why Modern Portfolio Theory Fails Investors

We are in a time of enormous risk. Economic growth is anemic, and political risk to the capital markets is on the rise. In the U.S., a generation of white-collar baby boomers is heading into retirement with insufficient assets in their 401(k) programs, and industrial workers are stuck with materially underfunded pension plans. Against that backdrop, the investing industry’s current set of practices and assumptions―modern portfolio theory (MPT)―is based on a half-century-old formula that is supposed to deliver the maximum amount of return for a given amount of risk. The trouble is that it doesn’t work very well.

In Getting Back to Business: Why Modern Portfolio Theory Fails Investors and How You Can Bring Common Sense to Your Portfolio, dividend-investing guru Daniel Peris proposes a radical new approach―radical in that it does away with MPT in favor of a more intuitive, common-sense approach practiced by business people in their own affairs every day: cash returns on cash investments.

Peris will also discuss being a historian in a profession with a notably low historical sensibility. How did a historian of the early Soviet period end up as a portfolio manager with $25 billion under advisement, a management team of 12, and author of three books on dividend investing?

Agenda
12 p.m.: Welcome Remarks and Introductions: Sris Chatterjee, professor and chair, Gabelli Center for Global Security Analysis; and James Kelly, professor and director, Gabelli Center for Global Security Analysis

12:05 p.m.: Presentation: Daniel Peris

12:45 p.m.: Audience Q&A

1 p.m.: Closing Remarks: James Kelly

About the Speaker
Daniel Peris, Ph.D., is senior vice president and senior portfolio manager at Federated-Hermes Inc., in Pittsburgh, where he oversees $25 billion in dividend-focused portfolios. He is the author of three books on capital markets.

Before transitioning into asset management, Peris was a historian focused on modern Russian history. In that capacity, Peris was a Fulbright-Hays scholar in the former Soviet Union from 1991 to 1992 and held a post-doctoral fellowship at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University in 1995. Follow him on Twitter at @historyinvestor, and visit his website at strategicdividendinvestor.com.

Copies of Getting Back to Business will be raffled off to attendees.

This event is co-sponsored with the CFA Society New York, the Gabelli Center for Global Security Analysis, and the Museum of American Finance.