Jeremy Siegel

Jeremy James Siegel (born November 14, 1945) is the Russell E. Palmer Professor of Finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Siegel comments extensively on the economy and financial markets. He appears regularly on networks including CNN, CNBC and NPR, and writes regular columns for Kiplinger's Personal Finance and Yahoo! Finance. Siegel's paradox is named after him. Siegel was born into a Jewish family in Chicago, Illinois, and graduated from Highland Park High School. He majored in mathematics and economics as an undergraduate at Columbia University, graduating in 1967, and obtained a Ph.D. from MIT in 1971. At MIT he studied under Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow, both Nobel Prize winners. He taught at the University of Chicago for four years before moving to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. As of 2007, Siegel was advisor to WisdomTree Investments, a sponsor of exchange-traded funds; he owned about 2% of the company, which was then worth an estimated $700 million. In his books Stocks for the Long Run (1998) and The Future for Investors (2005), Siegel outlines his investing theories and advice. He recommends against holding bonds, arguing their long-term performance tends to be negative after inflation. Siegel's position on bonds has been disputed, with critics proposing his data is flawed due to use of unreliable information from earlier sources. For stocks, Siegel recommends relying primarily or exclusively on index funds when possible, as active management tends to underperform market averages over long periods. (When he wrote in the late 1990s and early 2000's, index funds were not necessarily available in 401k plans but have become more popular since then.) He is not opposed to holding a small portion of the portfolio in single stocks, provided their selection is prudent. For all stocks or investment options, Siegel advise following a "D-I-V" mnemonic as a guideline: prioritizing dividends, international, and valuation.