Financial advisors are all familiar with Dalbar. Indeed, a good many of their clients are also familiar with its ubiquitous name, usually in connection with annually or quarterly updated studies and ratings reported in the financial press.
But who exactly is this Mr. Dalbar we've been hearing about for decades?
The wizard behind the curtain is Lou Harvey, who has led the Boston-based market research firm since he founded it in 1976.
Harvey has kept Dalbar on the cutting edge of some key issues in financial services. For example, he helped popularize behavioral finance long before it was in vogue, with the firm's Quantitative Analysis of Investor Behavior" (QAIB) report, now in its 21st edition.
QAIB brought to investor consciousness the distinction between investment returns and investor returns. Its most recent April update showed that stock mutual fund investors trailed the S&P 500 by over 8%.
The annual inference (each year brings similarly dismal results) is that the behavioral foibles of fund investors such as chasing returns by switching in and out of funds takes a big toll on financial outcomes. Vanguard founder Jack Bogle has often cited QAIB statistics in pressing his case for indexing.
Today, Harvey is particularly involved in training advisors toward fiduciary certification—as a means of maintaining a regulator-proof business model, but also in order to offer clients a superior standard of care.
The Dalbar imprimatur coveted by financial services companies through the firm's various product and service evaluations would have been inconceivable to a much younger Harvey, who knew nothing about finance in his youth.
Born on Guatemala's Caribbean coast and then raised in his mother's native Jamaica from the age of nine through college, where he studied physics, the young Harvey was 20 when he set out for the excitement of New York.
"I didn't like Jamaica at all," Harvey recalled. But his scientific, technical and computer training—the young Harvey was part of a group that installed the University of the West Indies' first computer—opened doors in the early '60s U.S. where computer skill was scant but very much in demand.
Less than three months in the Big Apple, the young professional received a financial services marketing pitch to discuss his "financial future" in the mail.
After responding eagerly, a broker met with him to explain the stock market, diversification and risk management—(to him) completely new concepts that he found "awe inspiring."
