Prudent investor must act as
other prudent investors who manage similar portfolios, with similar investment
objectives, act. Professional money managers can exercise judgment when taking
care of other people's money -- but they cannot take any action that is too
risky -- they cannot speculate by buying options, nor can they trade penny
stocks, etc.
The definition of a prudent
investor has undergone major changes over the years and the prudent investor rule describes
the standards to which managers must adhere when investing client money.
One hundred years ago, no manager
would consider investing in the stock market. Before 1945, prudent
investment professionals, and the law governing their liabilities, condemned
stock investing as imprudent speculation.
Later (after WW2), as inflation
became part of our lives and the legal view of stock investing changed, stocks
became the core holding
of most investment portfolios.
In modern times, as it became
clear that few investment professionals could outperform the stock market (as
measured by the performance of broad-based indexes, such as the S&P 500),
the law came to accept passive investing (indexing) as a prudent strategy.
Advisors may now own index funds and are not required to search for
outstanding investment opportunities.
This simplified road to investing
became the norm. Prudent money managers were pleased when they matched the returns of their
peers. Imprudent managers remain in business. They seek higher returns by
taking extra risk because they want to achieve results that attract new
investors.
As the market soared during
the 1980's and 1990's those 'average' returns were more than acceptable to most
investors as the value of their portfolios grew. When the bubble burst,
and the markets declined, average returns turned negative. That’s when
people noticed that hedge funds were
outperforming the overall market.
Although these funds keep
their trading strategies secret, it is known that they take advantage of
derivatives (including options) to find investment opportunities that are not
available to traditional money managers.