Acknowledgments

I DECIDED TO WRITE THIS BOOK WHILE OUT ON A LONG trail run. A lightbulb moment, of sorts. My thought was that I could write about complex investment topics in an accessible way, with a “Malcolm Gladwell” lens. After years of writing articles for investment journals, I thought it would be fun to remove the constraints imposed by academic referees. I wanted to focus on the interesting, and sometimes fascinating, conclusions from a wide range of research and from my experience. This book conveys insights from more than 200 academic articles with the goal of helping savvy investors become better asset allocators. Clearly, if you’ve made it this far, you know that I’m no Malcolm Gladwell. Some chapters remained technical, and I didn’t manage to completely eliminate jargon. One book agent told me that this book would “never, ever, be a mass-market book,” unless I rewrote it from scratch. I did not. McGraw Hill was happy to work with me to target a more sophisticated audience. I hope that you learned something new. My first thank you must go to Stephen Isaacs and McGraw Hill for believing in this project from day one, and for agreeing not to dilute the content. Also, thank you to Ingrid Case for her excellent edits.

Recently I was interviewed by a reporter at Kiplinger. She asked how people with a full-time job find time to write a book. The short answer is: with a lot of help from my friends.

Parts of this book are heavily inspired by articles I coauthored with T. Rowe Price colleagues Rob Panariello, Jim Tzitzouris, Bob Harlow, Stefan Hubrich, Anna Dreyer, Hailey Lynch, Sean McWilliams, David Giroux, 277Chris Faulkner-MacDonagh, David Clewell, and Charles Shriver. It has been, and continues to be, an absolute pleasure to work with every single one of you. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Rob Panariello for help with empirical questions throughout this book; Stefan Hubrich for his thought leadership on managed volatility and several other quantitative topics; Jim Tzitzouris for everything he’s taught me about life cycle investing; Jerome Clark and Wyatt Lee for building and leading our Target Date Funds franchise; and David Giroux for showing me how great investors think and for his thought leadership on the macroeconomic dashboards and other relative value analytics for tactical asset allocation. Also, David Clewell has provided continued support of all our “special topics” discussed in our Asset Allocation Committee, and he did yeoman’s work on the macroeconomic dashboards. Similarly, Hailey Lynch’s empirical analysis for the “Revenge of the Stock Pickers” was outstanding.

I must also thank Charles Shriver, Rob Sharps, and all the members of our Asset Allocation Committee—I’m lucky and humbled to sit at the table with such a distinguished group of investors. Every time we meet, I learn. Working with you makes me less of a dilequant, and more of an investor (you’ll have to go back to Chapter 8 if you’re not sure or forgot what I mean by “dilequant”).

Several colleagues gave feedback on an early draft of the manuscript and helped with a few rounds of edits. Many thanks to Gavin Daly, Peter Austin, Swabi Uus, Shannon Lucas, Stephanie Yankaskas, and Dan Middelton for your thoughtful suggestions. And a special thank you to Swabi Uus and John Zevitas for help with legal and compliance requirements, and to David Oestreicher and Terri Doud for mobilizing the legal resources to get this book reviewed internally. Also, thank you to Sylvia Toense, Head of Global Brand Marketing at T. Rowe Price, for her support of this project.

The more nuanced answers on how one gets to write a book on the side of a full-time job, in addition to help from friends and colleagues, involves synergies, mentorship, time management, and support from family. By synergies, I mean that the content of this book is my job. This book shows how we, as an organization, invest money for our clients. Due to our collaborative culture at T. Rowe Price, working there provides an incredible opportunity to learn from others and continue to push the boundaries of best practices for professional asset allocation. We have an outstanding culture, and I’m lucky to be part of this organization.

About mentorship, I often say that everything I’ve learned about asset allocation, I’ve learned from Mark Kritzman. Mark mentored me for more than a decade. It was the most rewarding professional collaboration of my entire career. We have remained friends, and I continue to learn from Mark. My career, let alone this book, would never have come to this point without Mark’s support throughout the years. As I mentioned earlier in this book, I even steal most of his conference presentation jokes.

At T. Rowe Price, now I benefit from similarly strong mentorship, guidance, and support from Rob Sharps and Bill Stromberg. I can’t imagine stronger role models for integrity, humility, investment savvy, and leadership. Our industry suffers from a dearth of skilled investors who can lead people. Rob and Bill are the real deal along both dimensions.

On time management, this book took me more than two years to write, little by little, with moments of self-doubt. I started writing after I read Cal Newport’s book Deep Work—one of the most impactful books I’ve ever read. It helped me organize my time. I’ve never met Cal, but I feel I need to thank him for changing how I think about time management. Mary Rolfe and Dan Middelton deserve a lot of credit as well for their help managing my schedule.

Last, about support from family, in addition to a passion for finance, I learned the importance of a strong work ethic from my father, Jean-Paul Page. He’s also taught me how to look at the world with healthy skepticism and to always use judgment in decision-making. I hope you enjoyed reading quotes from him throughout this book. Also, I want to thank my mother, Louisette Hamon. She is a force of nature and has supported me throughout my life.

I wrote parts of this book during nights, weekends, and vacation days. My wife, Anne Ferguson, has been incredibly supportive, and I’m forever grateful to her. She’s the love of my life. And to our wonderful kids, Charlie and Olivia, thank you so much for your support. I don’t think either of you will have an interest in this book. Robotics, video games, and social media are much more fun than finance, but my hope is that you’ll enjoy the fact that I’ve kept the last few words for you: you’re awesome, and I love you!