Editor’s Letter

Our Winter issue had a special section on Islamic Investing. This is a unique marketplace because of the balance between financial transactions Oand shari’ah-compliance. This is no more evident than in derivatives. We open the spring issue with Jobst who explains the fundamental legal principles underpinning Islamic derivatives. While the benefits of international equity portfolio diversification are well documented, the majority of this investing is in large cap securities. Lystra makes the case for the small cap international equity asset class. This is followed by Crook’s discussion of safe retirement rates in the current market environment. He provides a methodology for determining appropriate spending policy. There are many thoughts on the best way to measure market risk. McMurray and Melnikov propose a classification system of market risk models that is based on analysis of the key assumptions used. In spite of market volatility, Maynard cautions advocates staying with traditional investment plans with policies that are simple, transparent, and focused.

Target date funds are expected to account for more than 50% of all defined contribution assets in the near future. With this in mind, Idzorek, Stempien and Voris, discuss a tool for monitoring and evaluating target date funds. Slifka discusses the use of pre-commitment behavior by investment committees to move its future behavior in a desired contrarian direction. Since enough time has passed since 2005 and 2007 Consumer Reports mutual fund recommendations, Krueger and Chang examine the results to determine how successful their predictions were. This is followed by Haslem’s discussion of readily available approaches for investors to use in the identification of stewardship funds.

Our special section in this issue is on special investment opportunities for 2013 and beyond. We feature Ma and Patter-son’s discussion of gold investments, Gray, Greenway, Bibeault and Metzger’s examination of distressed acquisitions and Small, Smith and Small’s analysis of trading in diamonds.

As always, we welcome your submissions. We value your comments and suggestions so please email us at journals{at}investmentresearch.org.

Brian Bruce

Editor-in-Chief

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