Portfolio Design: A Modern Approach to Asset Allocation

Portfolio Design – choosing the right mix of assets appropriate to a particular investor – is the key to successful investing. It can help you accumulate wealth over time, while cushioning the blow of possible economic downturns. But in order to successfully achieve this goal, you need to be familiar with all of the major asset classes that go into modern portfolios and learn how much they add to portfolio diversification. Thoughtful asset allocation provides discipline to the investment process and gives you the best chance of building and safeguarding wealth. Wharton Professor Richard C. Marston, 2014 recipient of the Investment Management Consultants Association’s  prestigious Matthew R. McArthur Award, will guide you through the major decisions that need to be made when designing a portfolio and will put you in the best position to balance the risk-reward relationship that is part of this endeavor. 

Portfolio Design is to be read by investment advisors. The book is rich in information about individual asset classes, including both traditional assets like stocks and bonds as well as alternative assets such as hedge funds, private equity, real estate, and commodities. So it should appeal to all sophisticated advisors whether or not they are trying to qualify for one of the major investment designations. In fact, the book is designed to be read by any advisor who is as fascinated as Marston by the investment process.

RICHARD C. MARSTON is currently James R.F. Guy Professor of Finance and Director, George Weiss Center for International Financial Research at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He was a recipient of the Rhodes Scholarship, Fulbright Fellowship, and the Sanwa Bank Prize in International Finance. He has been a research associate for the National Bureau of Economic Research since 1979, a visiting professor at London Business School, ESSEC in Paris, and the Sasin Institute at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, and Visiting Scholar at the Bank of Japan. Since 1999, he has been Academic Director of the Private Wealth Management Program at Wharton, a week-long program for ultra-high-net-worth investors, and he is a long-standing faculty member in the Certified Investment Management Analyst program at Wharton, having taught asset allocation to over 5000 financial advisors.