More than 30 years of academic research has demonstrated the futility of active management.  (Also see “Active vs. Passive 101.”)  That is to say:

•Individual stock purchases driven by one’s own insights or research or those of others almost always leads to disappointing results

•Purchases of actively-managed mutual funds usually lead to sub-par results

•Attempts to “time the market” have proven to be especially dangerous for one’s portfolio

Despite this, most investors still try to “beat the market.”  Hope springs eternal.

Red Lighthouse Investment Management was established to provide an alternative approach.  Red Lighthouse provides investors with a diversified, tax-efficient portfolio tailored to their specific risk profile.  Most of our systematically rebalanced portfolios are composed of low cost “passive” mutual funds.  We offer these services to individuals, family offices, trusts, estates, pension plans, foundations, and other select business entities.

Mark Sladkus is Founder and President of Red Lighthouse Investment Management. 

His more than twenty years experience with creating and maintaining indices provided the inspiration and foundation for Red Lighthouse.  As head of Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI), Mark served as chair of the index committee, the group responsible for selecting which securities enter and exit the MSCI family of indices including the well-known EAFE and EM and ACWI Indices.  Mark oversaw the creation of the world’s first investable emerging market index and the world’s first global value and growth family of indices.  Mark also headed up the effort to design a global small cap(1) family of indices.

Mark is a recipient of the William F. Sharpe Lifetime Indexing Achievement Award.  This prestigious award is named after William F. Sharpe, an accomplished Nobel Prize winner who helped develop the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), among other achievements.  Other winners of this award include Nobel Laureate Paul Samuelson; John Bogle, the founder of Vanguard; and Burton Malkiel, the economist most well known for his classic A Random Walk Down Wall Street.  Also sharing the stage and receiving the same award during the same ceremony in December of 2008 was Nobel Prize winner Harry Markowitz, considered the father of Modern Portfolio Theory.

Mark is a leading authority on index construction.  He has presented to thousands of senior executives in dozens of countries including many of the largest pension plans, foundations, and endowments.  Mark is a recognized speaker at investment conferences around the world.

Prior to heading up MSCI, Mark was an internal consultant for Morgan Stanley.  Mark has also held positions at Smith Barney and J.P. Morgan.

Mark has a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) in Finance from the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business and a B.A in Economics from Cornell University.

Mark is a life-long New Yorker and enjoys living on the Upper West Side with his wife and three children.

Gary Link is a Partner at Red Lighthouse Investment Management.  He has over 30 years experience in the financial services industry.  Prior to joining Red Lighthouse, Gary was CEO and Founding Partner of Stoneworks Asset Management LLP, a London based institutional investment management firm.  Gary has had extensive experience in private wealth management as Managing Director in JP Morgan’s Private Bank. 

Gary has been a pioneer in global investing.  He spent many years working for JP Morgan in Brussels on behalf of Euroclear to open government bond and equity markets to foreign investors.  In his role as Managing Director for International Prime Brokerage for Citigroup, he facilitated access to financing and global trading for investment management clients.

Gary has a B.A. in Economics from Cornell University, and has passed the Certified Financial Planning exam.

Steven Schoenfeld, Strategist at Red Lighthouse Investment Management, has more than 25 years of industry experience including index investing, portfolio management, product development and asset allocation for institutions and high-net-worth individuals.

Steven was one of the first foreign members of the Singapore International Monetary Exchange, where he traded Japanese stock index futures.   He led the team which developed the IFC Investable Indexes at the International Finance Corporation/World Bank and where he also partnered with State Street to launch the first global emerging market index fund.

He was a Managing Director at Barclays Global Investors (BGI) where he helped build the firms Emerging Market index capabilities, and developed the industry’s first “Integrated International Equity Index” Strategy.  He also developed and managed the first Emerging Market iShares ETFs

Subsequently, Steven was Chief Investment Officer for Global Quantitative Management at Northern Trust, where he oversaw more than $300 billion in index and active equity and fixed income portfolios.  He was a member of the firms Investment Policy Committee that established asset allocation for wealth management clients, and worked closely with institutional and high-net-worth clients to develop optimal investment strategies to meet their long-term objectives.

He is Editor and primary author of Active Index Investing (Wiley Finance, 2004, Toyo-Keizai 2006, China Press 2009) To supplement the book, Steven founded IndexUniverse.com, a leading index/ETF industry website.

Steven was a Fulbright Scholar in Economics at the University of Singapore, where his research focused on the development of Asia’s derivative markets and resulted in the book The Pacific Rim Futures and Options Markets (McGraw-Hill, 1992).  He has an MA from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and a BA from Clark University.

1. (1)Small cap: stocks with relatively small market capitalization where market capitalization is price times shares outstanding
   

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