Why “On the Buy Side”?

Welcome to “On the Buy Side” (“OTBS”).  We hope you find these articles to be useful and educational in your investing life.  That’s the whole idea. 

First, a definition.  Who or what is “on the buy side”, anyway?  You are—if you have money to invest.  Investors collectively are known as the “buy side” of investing, while those who have investments to sell are—logically enough—known as the “sell side”.   (More on this is a future post.)

Given that there are hundreds of websites and blogs devoted to investing—not to mention lots of people who would like to tell you where you should put your money—why bother with this one?  What makes this different?

Well, for starters:

1. “On the Buy Side” intends to provide substantive education and background to wealthy investors, who may or may not consider themselves to be financially sophisticated—but who know they need to be armed with knowledge in managing their own wealth (or in overseeing their outside advisors).  Over time, the blog will build a cumulative body of knowledge that should help any investor become a more-savvy buyer of investment products and services.  And it’ll be written in plain English—not investment-speak.   
2. The author of these articles—Elizabeth P. Anderson–  has more than two decades of experience in choosing specific investments and managing portfolios on behalf of the owners of large, sophisticated pools of capital, such as the Princeton University endowment.  (A full bio is here.)  Ms. Anderson has spent her career being—not selling to—the client. 
3. It focuses on what’s knowable and controllable.  

For example, it isn’t possible for any investor, no matter how wealthy, to control what the general investment climate will look like two years from now—or tomorrow, for that matter.   It is possible for any investor to decline deals that are overly skewed toward enriching the deal’s sellers—if the investor knows what the deal terms mean, and what they imply for the split of profits between investor and seller.

Or again– It isn’t possible for an investor to know what the future return on a specific fund will be—but is possible to know that a fund’s track record of past returns has been statistically smoothed  to make it look better than it actually was. 

So if you’re looking for predictions about politics, or whether the deficit will be brought under control, or which developing countries will be most attractive ten years from now, this isn’t the place.   I have no crystal ball, and frankly, neither has anyone else.  But if you want to focus on what you can know, and what you can do, to make your investing life more successful, start here.