My son on the Utah-Nevada border. His t-shirt reads, “I’m not lazy, I’m energy efficient”

The Wall Street Journal has been running a series on the rise of passive investing (they seem to think it’s bad, since it guts demand for analysts and expensive advisors, even though passive investing tends to outperforming active in the long run), and today they have a piece on Nevada’s $35 retirement billion fund manager:

Steve Edmundson has no co-workers, rarely takes meetings and often eats leftovers at his desk.

With that dynamic workday, the investment chief for the Nevada Public Employees’ Retirement System is out-earning pension funds that have hundreds on staff.His daily trading strategy: Do as little as possible, usually nothing.

The Nevada system’s stocks and bonds are all in low-cost funds that mimic indexes. Mr. Edmundson may make one change to the portfolio a year….

He generally doesn’t work outside 8 a.m.-to-5 p.m. hours. He commutes in a 2005 Honda Element with over 175,000 miles on it. His 2015 salary was $127,121.75, according to a Nevada Policy Research Institute database.

The typical Wall Street Journal reader, working on Wall Street, will probably read that and think, Crazy!

There’s also this interesting nugget:

“Doing nothing is harder than it looks,” says Ken Lambert, Mr. Edmundson’s predecessor and only outside investment-strategy consultant. Harder, he says, because of the restraint needed to practice inaction.

The temptation to do rapid-reaction, or to look busy so your clients will think you’re on top of things, is strong in many fields, and I suspect it less to more than a little hasty and poor decision-making. Kudos to Edmondson for being able to resist.

Maybe I should send him a copy of REST. It sounds like he has time to read it!