What’s In a Name?

Last October it occurred to me that I needed to come up with a name for my manuscript. The book itself had taken a rather schizophrenic form where the first half of the book was all about investment theory and the second half was a very practical discussion about how to manage money. As I discussed this matter with my editor, test readers, teenage children, and strangers that I met at the mall, it was clear that any title that was too “geeky” was out. What made it through the clutter was a title called, “Buy and Hold is Dead,” which I believe I first heard on CNBC’s Fast Money program. After further discussion, my associate, Michael Kitces, who is the Director of Financial Planning Research at Pinnacle, recommended that we add (AGAIN) to the title. We agreed this more nuanced approach made sense since buy and hold investing dies at the end of every long-term or secular bear market, and there have been at least five of them (depending on how you count them) over the past 100 years or so. Buy and Hold is Dead (AGAIN) passed muster with everyone as a clever and pithy title that would land me on the best seller list, or at least get me on the Jerry Springer show or the Tyra Banks program, both of which are renowned for featuring books about pricing theory and theoretical economics.

Today I happened to Google the term buy and hold is dead, and I’m pleased to report that I only came up with 10,400,000 hits. That’s correct. 10.4 million Internet goers are either writing or reading about buy and hold being dead. Clearly my witty and clever title is no longer as witty as it seemed at the time. So now I’m left to hope that my book stands on its own in offering a different and intelligent view of the financial planning industry, the status quo for professional investing, and the practical approaches to active management that I believe are so important for intelligent investors to understand.

So far Buy and Hold is Dead (AGAIN) will only get you about 6 hits on Google, but I’m hopeful that we can change that number over the next several months. I hope to aggressively spread the message that active money management is a necessity for portfolio managers who want to best manage risk for themselves or their clients. Hopefully I can use this space to comment on this new book adventure as well as the state of the investment industry and the financial markets. I’m unclear how they optimize these things, but this just might be Google hit number 7.