
But Bertie got tired of all of the rules, the fine dining, the musical performances and the noise, so he headed up to the surface. Lemmings also had to walk on their hind legs and use utensils to eat. In their warren of tunnels, there was no wild behavior, no growling, no rolling and no mud. The lemming society had a lot of rules to follow in order to belong.
Lemmings jumping off cliffs ch free#
Patrick Schüffel, Professor, Institute of Finance, Haute école de gestion Fribourg, Chemin du Musée 4, CH-1700 Fribourg, / Feel free to check out further articles on Society of Distinguished Lemmings by Julie Colombet (9781682631560) Human driven alpha generating strategies will then take back the lead from beta generating Robo-Advisors.ĭr. A broad decline of equity indices may then lead to a true renaissance of the hedge fund industry. Lemming Robos which will not have enhanced their offerings by then, will not serve their clients well. No matter the cause of the next financial market downturn, it is safe to say that it will happen. Clients may therefore want to invest part of their assets into hedged investment structures of different provenance. However, if the supply side, does not act, then the demand side should swing into action and diversify their ETF portfolios. Gambling on ever increasing stock markets is just too risky of a gamble. Consequently, they should consider incorporating hedging functionalities into their offerings. Robo-Advisors need to make the next evolutionary step and get prepared for wider market downturns. The herd of Lemming-Robos will just follow the rest of the market into deep waters. In this situation Robo-Advisors will be rather useless as they typically have no built-in hedge functionality. These divestments will fuel another round of decline in indices. Yet, as soon as markets move down for a prolonged period, many investors will start to liquidate ETF positions. Clients are no longer willing to accept a 2/20 fee structure no matter the performance of their investment. No hedging functionalitiesĮvidently, the heyday of hedge funds are over. Yet, in declining markets, the index-pegged Robos will just perform as poorly as their benchmarks. Against the backdrop of these well performing indices it requires no magic to put together a well performing client portfolio. Over the past five years the Euro Stoxx 50 went up 32%, the Dow Jones soared by 68%, and the S&P 500 grew by 78%. However, what will happen when the markets turn south? Most Robo-Advisors are not older than five years. This model has worked fairly well as long as the stock markets were going up. Clearly, while there are exceptions, Robo-Advisors typically build client portfolios from ETFs, more specifically from equity ETFs. A Robo-Advisor can be defined as a self-guided online wealth management service that provides automated investment advice at low costs and low account minimums employing portfolio management algorithms. Robo-Advisors are sprawling across the globe. The broadly hailed Robo-Advisors of the Fintech age are likely to amplify this problem. Benchmarks are extensively being used and research in the field of behavioral Finance has yielded strong indications that herding behavior is rather pronounced. Once a significant share of the group has entered the water, the other Lemmings are likely to follow suit, inconsiderate of the potential fatality of their choice. What is true, however, is that large populations of Lemmings move in one group, and it is this group migration that influences the moves of the individual Lemming.

However, when doing so, many may drown as the fjords or rivers are too wide, thus stretching the Lemmings’ physical capabilities beyond their limits. As Lemmings can swim, they then may choose to cross a body of water in search of a new habitat. Instead of committing suicide Lemmings will seek pastures new when their environment no longer serves their biological urges. However, this is quite far from the truth. It is said that they commit mass suicide by jumping off cliffs when their population becomes too dense. There is a popular misconception about Lemmings.
