Money matters: Benchmarks - Beware!
Graham Macdonald
MBMG International Ltd.
Shortcuts can either be a quicker way to get where
you’re going or a lazy way of doing what has to be done. Benchmarks were
originally intended to be the former but have, sadly, become the latter.
Carol Loomis’ famous Fortune article that
‘discovered Alfred Winslow Jones’ Long/short investment methodology
also gave a good deal of coverage to Gerald Tsai, who had just left the
Fidelity Trend Fund and had raised $247 million from 150,000 investors to
launch his new Manhattan Fund. The only similarity perhaps being that each
manager deployed a far greater level of focus than was apparent in the
markets at that time. Jones, however, was concerned to limit risk and
volatility whereas Tsai almost embraced extra risk as a means of
generating extra returns - which does work some of the time.
In its first full year, 1967, the Manhattan Fund
returned 39.4%. In the late 1960s this risk-controlled approach had little
prospect of outperforming Gerry Tsai’s narrow focus on momentum stocks,
although true advocates of Jones would have accepted that this didn’t
matter. Other dogs could have their day - but there would be plenty of dog
days to come for Tsai. At the time, Barton Biggs was working at Fairfield
Partners, itself a spin-off of A.W. Jones & Co.
“It was different then, we were all just leveraged
long the new small capitalization growth stocks. Morgan Guaranty was
buying the Nifty Fifty, hedge funds were buying the riskier new issues.
Hedging market risk or any risk was no longer part of the equation.”
After a 39% gain in 1967-68, followed by a modest
downturn in 1969-70, the S&P 500 was up 36% in 1971-72. For that
six-year period the S&P 500 returned a total of 78%, but the Nifty
Fifty and the velocity stocks had generated far higher returns. Isolating
the highest available market risk was the winning strategy during this 6
year period. However, the bull market ended with OPEC’s 1973 embargo on
crude oil supplies. In 1973-74 the S&P 500 dropped by nearly 40% -
actually rather more when measured peak to trough. The Nifty Fifty stocks
dropped on average 66% from their peak. Tsai’s Manhattan Fund lost
nearly 80% of its value. Manhattan and its cohorts hadn’t been real
hedge funds, but they hadn’t been traditional funds either. It was far
better for the established Wall Street names to ascribe the worst losses
and indeed some blame for all of the losses to hedge funds so that their
own reputations wouldn’t attract unfavourable scrutiny. By the
md-‘80s, the term “hedge fund” had became synonymous with an
investment process that targeted high returns at great risk to the
capital.
Whilst the right conclusion to draw would have been a
return to the enhanced Alpha (more return for less risk) strategies of
Jones, the market chased Beta (market-driven levels of return) instead.
While a great deal of wealth was destroyed in 1973-74, a portion was in
fact transferred to countries and organizations that either possessed or
were involved in finding crude oil reserves. Within the financial markets,
the most visible beneficiaries of this wealth transfer were a group of
companies known as the seven sisters. These were the world’s largest oil
companies; their stocks rose during the bear market. But not one of the
seven sisters was in Kidder Peabody’s Nifty-Fifty, or among the velocity
stocks, in 1973-74. Investors began to wonder how they could have been
misled into owning only the Nifty Fifty and velocity stocks and none of
the seven sisters.
It is no coincidence that index funds were born in
1976, when John Bogle opened First Index Investment Trust, now known as
Vanguard. In such an environment, mediocrity could look attractive -
especially with an influx of new money from first-time investors afraid of
getting ‘burned’. In 1952 the number of mutual funds had just exceeded
100, and they counted a little more than one million investors as clients.
By 1970 the number of mutual funds had grown to 269, with a total of $48.3
billion in assets. Congress then further helped accelerate the growth of
mutual funds with the creation of Individual Retirement Accounts in 1981.
In the post 1974 environment, mutual funds increasingly
managed their portfolios to closely follow market indices. One response
was a wider use of benchmarks for managers. Benchmarks began as a kind of
legal firewall for trustees, who had personal liability under ERISA.
Over time, the benchmarks came with increasingly
restrictive allowable return variance, in the form of expected tracking
error. Thus began a two-decade-long pilgrimage toward the benchmark
dictating 90% or more of the specific securities a manager may own,
regardless of their return or risk proposition. Institutional capital
largely began to invest in the public markets through Beta basket
allocations, a practice now referred to as “closet indexing.”
The institution and manager maintain the pretence that
the assignment is active, keeping “in the closet” the fact that the
portfolio’s risk-return characteristics very nearly mirror those of the
index. This practice does not favour capital allocations that develop
high-quality alpha, since most of the manager’s risk capital is not
discretionary.
More recently there has been tremendous growth in
Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), which, like index funds, are out of the
closet. These allow investors to buy and sell a single exchange-listed
Beta basket. ETFs are available today on hundreds of sub-indices and
compete with mutual funds for investors’ capital. A 2003 Goldman Sachs
study across many large U.S. pension plans determined that these plans
“had 84% of their risk in equity market Beta, 15% in interest rate risk,
and 1% allocated to active or alpha risk.” 1% - you’re paying your
pension fund manager to manage just 1% of the money (admittedly these
are US stats but the UK isn’t much better).
Admittedly, acquiring pure market Beta does reduce the
number of decisions required, streamlining the process and thus lowering
explicit costs. The benchmarks and tracking error largely eliminate the
need for specific securities decisions on the part of the wealth owner or
manager. Risk management is a relatively passive afterthought, based on
historical assumptions about risk and return within the “optimization
process.”
But then again - as we’ve noted in the past,
expensive does not always mean quality, but cheap hardly ever does.
It has taken the post-millennium market events for
researchers like Michael Litt of FrontPoint Partners to realize what a
dangerous strategy such passive indexing can be, but sadly his warnings
are likely to fall on mainly deaf ears until it is too late and the great
crash of 05 or 06 or 07 is upon us.
There have been increasing exceptions over the years,
with more alternative managers, and the likes of the large university
endowments, including Harvard and Yale, who have successfully integrated
hedge fund, private equity, and real asset holdings into their portfolio
compositions, with the goal of achieving expanded real diversification and
efficiency. Despite the huge growth in this kind of thinking, it remains a
tiny proportion of the investment universe. Institutions and individuals
who have moved away from passive Beta over the last few years will be glad
that they did so at some point in the future. However, there will be many
more horror stories of those who will come to wish that they had but
didn’t know enough to act decisively enough in a timely enough fashion.
The above data and research was compiled from sources believed to be
reliable. However, neither MBMG International Ltd nor its officers can accept
any liability for any errors or omissions in the above article nor bear any
responsibility for any losses achieved as a result of any actions taken or not
taken as a consequence of reading the above article. For more information please
contact Graham Macdonald on [email protected]
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Snap Shots: Action shots sitting still
by Harry Flashman
Normally one thinks that to get great action shots you
need a camera with a very fast shutter speed (in the thousandths of a
second range), an ability to focus quicker than the proverbial speeding
bullet, and the ability to compose the shot in half a twinkling of one
eye. All that still holds good and true, but there is another way of
capturing action. And this way requires no fancy, expensive hi-tech
equipment, and in fact can be done with the simplest point and shoot
compact.
This
way all depends on the Theory of Relativity, but don’t let that rather
grand title drive you away! It is so easy to understand, and the results
are so good, you will use this trick forever!
Getting down to basics - when you are standing at the
side of the road and want to photograph a motorcycle going past at 80 kph,
you will need a fast shutter speed, as the subject matter (the motorcycle)
is going past you at 22 meters per second. To stop that kind of action
will need 1/1000th of a second, which you will find will stop all the
action, but you get a photograph of a ‘stopped’ motorcycle in front of
a stopped background.
The other way to photograph this motorcycle requires
the ability to ‘pan’, following it through with the movement in the
camera. Not such an easy concept, and one that can deliver disappointing
shots. If you are lucky, you do get a stopped motorcycle in front of a
blurred background, but I repeat, these are not easy shots.
However, there is the easy way, using the Theory of
Relativity. Let us imagine that the motor car or cycle is going along at
80 kph, and you are also going along at 80 kph in the same direction, then
the relative speed differential between you and the subject is zero! You
are doing the identical speed, so it is almost as if both of you are
standing still. This kind of shot does not need a fast shutter speed, in
fact 1/30th or even 1/15th can be safely used. But then you are moving at
80 kph relative to the background, so it is being blurred, which gives the
impression of speed. Perfectly sharply focused subject against a moving
background, no fast shutter speeds and no need to pan. Perfect!
In practice, this is not difficult. Get someone to
drive your car and synchronize your road speed with that of the subject
(in our example, I have used 80 kph). Wind the window down, fill the frame
by using your zoom lens (or move away or closer if using a fixed lens) and
then focus the shot. Since you are at the same speed, and the same
distance apart, focusing is easy and you can take your time. Finally, pop
the shutter.
Try different shutter speeds too. The slower the
shutter speed, the more blurred the background. Don’t spoil the effect
by using a fast shutter speed (125th or faster) as you do not need it.
Your shot will show the fluttering movement in clothes and hair, which
will give you a new viewpoint and perspective, and one that you may not
have thought of before. The shot here was taken with a standard 50 mm
lens, at 1/30th second, and shows the movement in the passenger’s hair
quite well. With the background moving, there is no doubt that this shot
was taken ‘on the run’. The camera was run on ‘auto’ and no
attempt was made to correct or modify the aperture. The camera’s
electronic eye could handle that very well.
If you want to change the angle of the photograph, you can do that as
well. Try taking a head-on shot of a car, by travelling at the same speed,
while it follows you. Shoot out of the back window and again the following
car and yourself are doing the same speed. Relative difference in speeds?
Zero! But the road is flashing past underneath you, and you have that
action component again.
Modern Medicine: Physician heal thyself
by Dr. Iain Corness, ConsultantI
still manage to get a chuckle out of all the people who have said over the
years, “You can’t be sick, you’re a doctor!” or when I have had a
miserable cold, from all those who have delighted in saying, “Have you
seen a doctor for that cough?” My usual reply is that I saw one that
morning, while I looked in the mirror to shave.
Before launching off, I should point out that in my
experience, doctors come in two types - those who instantly take some
medication for any perceived ailment (just in case it gets worse) and those
who treat personal afflictions with large doses of disregard. I come in the
latter group.
A couple of weeks ago I noticed a pain in the left side
of my chest, which I knew was a ‘pleuritic’ pain, coming from the
covering of the lung. I was also getting fairly tired, but put this down to
our new baby at home and working long hours. But the final symptom, which I
chose to ignore totally, was that my urine was very much darker than normal.
During my morning consultation with myself in the shaving
mirror, each day I resolved I would wait another day before actually doing
anything, as I and the physician mirror agreed that I would probably be much
better tomorrow. However, after cajoling from my wife, I finally decided to
talk to one of my colleagues. The fact that I was puffed out just walking
from the hospital car park to my office did add to that resolve!
I spoke to Dr. Prasit who quickly arranged chest X-Ray
and blood and urine tests. A pleural effusion was confirmed, as were 4 +’s
of blood in the urine and a blood count dangerously close to transfusion
levels. Joking time was over. I exchanged my white doctor’s coat for the
pale blue hospital pyjamas.
With the major symptoms being lung and kidney, Dr.
Ong-Ard (respiratory physician) and Dr. Bupha (nephrologist) were brought
in, and a battery of tests ensued, including MRI to exclude a pulmonary
embolism. MRI’s are not fun, lying in the cramped noisy tunnel, but very
accurate. With the lung condition appearing as secondary to the kidney
problems, the next step was a renal biopsy.
If I thought the MRI wasn’t fun, it paled into
insignificance compared to the renal biopsy! Lying on your stomach with a
rolled up towel pushing your kidneys into your back, while kindly Dr. Bupha
inserted a large bore needle through my back, under ultrasound display, and
on the count of three, and “Hold your breath, Doctor,” speared my kidney
and withdrew a ‘core’ sample for examination by the pathologists. Of
course, you cannot rely on one sample, so this procedure happens three
times. You are then nursed lying on your back, with something like a wrapped
up house-brick pushing your back muscles up onto the kidney surface to
attempt to prevent excessive bleeding. “You must stay this way for six
hours,” said Dr. Bupha, after sheathing her medical boring bar!
While awaiting the results, I was started on large dose
of steroids. However, after checking, I still do not have a Schwarzenegger
physique, but the urine has miraculously returned to its normal straw
yellow. Dr’s Prasit and Bupha looked pleased. Their treatment appeared to
be working.
But the shaving mirror doctor was not to be denied.
Pascal Schnyder, of Casa Pascal, heard I was ill and sent up a platter of
salmon and cheeses, and a bottle of champagne. My wife enquired as to
whether Dr. Bupha had had agreed to any champagne. I replied that I hadn’t
asked her, but Dr. Corness felt that half a bottle would be beneficial. The
next morning the urine was, as mentioned above, returned to the clear straw
colour. The steroids might have helped, but the champagne made all the
difference, the shaving mirror physician assures me!
After five days I was fit enough to leave the ward, to
return to my consulting office downstairs. The physician is healing himself,
with help from Dr’s Prasit, Bupha, and honorary physician Pascal Schnyder.
But it’s been a long hard row. I hope it doesn’t happen to you!
Learn to Live to Learn: Postcard from Manila
with Andrew Watson
You’ve got to love living in Thailand. A short hop
from some genuinely brilliant countries and a world of adventure within.
I guess you notice it most when a holiday turns up (I have to admit I
don’t even notice them coming). There you are with a few days to
spare, thinking to yourself, “Where shall I go?” when you are gently
overcome by euphoria as you realise, “Hey! I’m in Thailand! I must
be on holiday already!”
Tim
Knight.
The Vanilla in Manila.
I’ve been lucky enough to travel extensively in the
region either for business or pleasure (is there a difference?) but
I’d never been to Manila before. I was looking forward to it hugely. I
was meeting a number of teachers and administrators involved with the
Council of International Schools (CIS) and having a good look at some
local international schools. A busman’s holiday of course, the kind
that has on occasions brought a weary sigh from my wife. In Melbourne
Australia, for instance, a few years ago, we were on summer vacation and
having a great time. But, I must have missed the school atmosphere, so I
“took in a couple”. Sensational schools they were too. Methodist
Ladies College (where there are very few obviously Methodist Ladies) and
Carey Baptist Grammar school, just down the road. Brilliantly high
achieving schools they were too, in every sense. As it transpired,
Manila was the first time since Melbourne that I had come across high
quality schools in such close proximity to one another.
In an area of the city purposely devoted to schools,
there are almost no other constructions of any kind in the immediate
vicinity. On one side of the road there is the impressive British School
of Manila, a well established school (1976) of eight hundred students
representing almost forty nationalities, studying the English National
Curriculum up until Year 11, then the IB diploma in years 12 and 13.
Literally next door is the Japanese school, attached to the Embassy of
Japan and also highly successful in offering the Japanese curriculum.
Across the road, dwarfing both these excellent schools, is the
International School of Manila (ISM) offering the American curriculum
with the IB diploma in the last two years alongside the Advanced
Placement (AP) Programme. Founded in 1920, ISM moved to its current
home, a 70,000 square foot state-of-the-art facility on 7 hectares in
Global City, Fort Bonifacio, in August 2002. Since then, the progress
has been spectacular and I’ll wager you’ll have to travel far and
wide to see a better equipped, managed or higher achieving school,
epitomised by their IB diploma programme and its coordinator, Tim
Knight.
Knight could be described as an unusual combination.
He’s an Oxonian Burnley fan, married to a wonderful French woman with
two lovely young children. As always, I was curious as to what had drawn
him into teaching. “Well, it wasn’t to save the world. I wanted to
be involved in the development of something. It wasn’t an altruistic
impulse. Actually, it seemed quite sexy, if you know what I mean?”
Actually, I do. This travel with work thing is just the best. A chance
to drink it all in.
Tim and family seem to have a great life. Beautiful
house with a pool, brilliant work environment. I wondered whether
teaching was all that he had envisaged when he started out on the path?
“I suppose it took about three years before I felt it had turned into
a profession, then a career. Then, I became a teacher.”
I know what he means. There’s an art to it that
seems to creep up on you, then one day your professional persuasion and
your personal life appear to coincide. A happy moment indeed.
“Probably, when you start to develop your expertise, you begin liking
things you do well. There’s a kind of symbiotic relationship between
doing something well and enjoying it - developing an element of mastery
of the teaching process. Maybe it’s a bit egocentric at first, but the
period I’m talking about I was still in my twenties, so there’s an
element of maturity involved.”
Well, there’s nothing like travel to broaden the
mind, I proposed, swinging in Tim’s hammock. You get to see the world
bigger. “That’s right. This was what was lacking in my education.
I’m quite good at specific things, like pedagogy, the Maths, but it
took me five years before I saw the evolution out of pedagogy into
education. Fast forward six or seven years and experiencing the IB
diploma (IBDP), I realize that previously there was something lacking
within me. The IBDP has shown me a much broader education which deals
with that bigger world, rather than just individual subjects”.
Looking at the recent contributions to Mailbag, I
threw a rather vogue George Bernard Shaw line at Tim. “He who can,
does, He who cannot, teaches? I think some teachers are in that
situation. What would I do if I wasn’t teaching? Well I’m not a
Maths researcher. I’m not a saint, I’m not a priest. I see teachers
like doctors or lawyers, as professionals, with expertise, experience
and ways of doing things. But sure, it’s a job. Do doctors go home and
forget their jobs? I don’t know. There’s a feeling that teaching is
a 24/7 job.”
Not on this occasion, though. When travelling, I
think it is absolutely essential to “get out”, usually to the
“Latin Quarter”. (I had a bit of trouble finding the Latin Quarter
in Shanghai). In Manila, rebuilt after an apocalyptic World War II
experience, there’s plenty to see and do. In “Havana” we came
across a band whose rhythm is still coursing through my veins. I
haven’t danced, laughed or had such fun in a long time. Now that’s
what travel is all about.
[email protected]
Next week: Why not teaching?
Heart to Heart with Hillary
Dear Hillary,
I was warned by many but I didn’t listen. I said to myself “not me,
it won’t happen to me”. But I was wrong and I paid a dear price for
it. You see Hillary, I’m one of those thousands of lonely old fools
who came to Thailand to enjoy the companionship of younger women. Few
years back, I met “Noi” at a bar and I thought she was the girl of
my dreams. We hit it off well and it seemed everything was fine in the
beginning. I asked her to move-in to my condo and she did as long as she
got her “stipend” of 10,000 baht per month. After few months she got
pregnant so we decided to get married. She was 26 and I was 60. I knew
the age difference would shock my family and friends and would be the
laughing subject for the town back home but I didn’t care and so I
married a bargirl like almost all foreigners do. Next few years went
fine and everything seemed great with few bumps, mostly financial. I
still had to pay her “stipend”, which seemed awkward to me but to
her it was expected of me to pay her for being my wife. As my daughter
approached school age, we checked out all the local international
schools and I was shocked at the cost of educating a single foreign
child here in Thailand, never mind two or more. The financial hardship
was too much for me to pay so we decided to go back home to my home
country. It was a sad day when I left Thailand and I didn’t know what
to expect, but I had to try. I stayed with my son who seemed genuinely
happy to see me but his wife and my sisters and their husbands were not.
They didn’t say too much and put on an appearance but I knew what they
were thinking. They saw a dirty old man who married a prostitute younger
than their kids with a young child and deserve what was coming to me.
They never said this to me but I could see it on their faces. After
couple weeks I found a small apartment for my family and got a job as an
accountant which was my trade before entering Thailand. As I suspected,
I was the laughing subject of the neighborhood. Everybody seemed to know
the whole story. When I walked with my wife and daughter, I would hear
them gossiping and laughing at us. Even my wife and daughter felt the
pain. What hurt the most was when my daughter was ashamed to see me in
school because her friends would make fun of her for having such an old
man as a father. After two years, my wife seemed angry at me for small
things that seemed minor and insignificant but she would get angry over
nothing. She just wanted to fight all the time and I didn’t know why
until I found out after few months. She was having an affair with the
local policeman her age who lived in the same apartment complex. I was
hurt and angry and ready to hurt somebody but for the sake of my
daughter I stayed collected over the whole incident. As I expected, she
filed for a divorce with the help of her policeman boyfriend. I had to
move out and consulted a lawyer. As he explained it, she would get the
custody of our daughter and child support until my daughter turns 21 or
until my death. This sounds funny now but it wasn’t funny then since I
seriously thought about suicide. I didn’t know what to do so I took
some time off and came back to Thailand to think. Currently, I barely
have enough money to live on. If it wasn’t for welfare system for old
people from my country, I would be on the streets.
Another Lonely Old Fool
Dear Lonely (but not an Old Fool),
Hillary can understand your pain, and I congratulate you on being so
brave as to put it all down in your letter. I hope you will take the
time to read my reply, just as I have taken the time with yours. First
off, you have done nothing “wrong”. Marriages are always difficult
relationships, and forget about the bargirl, older foreigner statistics.
Were you aware that more than 50 percent of first-time marriages in the
UK and America fail as well? And there’s no cultural or communication
problems in those unions.
The reason for the hostility in your home country over the so-called
‘trophy bride’ situation stems purely from jealousy. Men do not
often grow gracefully older with their aging partners, but lust after
what they used to have – which you were still having.
I will not go into the divorce laws in your home country, but they were
not designed to be equitable, but you are stuck with them. Even though
it is hurtful, just remember that your daughter will always owe her
initial upbringing and educational possibilities to you. Nobody else.
You are a good man. You have acted honorably. You can hold your head up
high. Life may be ‘different’ these days, but your own spirit will
carry you through again. Congratulations on coming though a very
difficult period in your life. One day we might even share some champers
and chocolates!
Psychological Perspectives: Sexual attitudes and behavior
are changing among young people
by Michael Catalanello,
Ph.D.
It might seem obvious, particularly to
those of us living in Pattaya, that sexual mores within our societies have
changed over the years. We seem to be living in a much more permissive
society than our parents and grandparents did. A study published this month
in the journal Review of General Psychology sheds light on how these
changes have appeared in the attitudes and behavior of North American young
people.
Examining 530 studies which were published over a period
of 56 years, involving 269,649 subjects, researchers concluded that
today’s young people are having intercourse earlier, engaging more in
oral sex, and are feeling less guilty about their sexual behavior than did
previous generations. The changes are most pronounced among females.
During the late 1990s, sexual activity was reported by
47% of surveyed teenaged girls and young women aged 12 to 27 years of age.
During the 1950s, a mere 13% of this group reported being sexually active.
Increases in sexual activity also appeared among young men, although the
changes were not as pronounced.
The popularity of oral sex has also increased over the
years. In 1969, 48% of young men and 42% of young women reported engaging
in oral sex. By 1993 the figures had risen to 72% for young men and 71% for
young women, according to the report.
Investigators found that young people are becoming
sexually active at a younger age, as compared to previous generations.
Before 1970, the average age at which young men and women were first having
intercourse was 18 and 19 years of age, respectively. The average had
dropped to 15 years for both groups by the late 1990s.
Interestingly, although sexual behavior of young people
has become more permissive over the years, the average number of sexual
partners reported by those participating in the study showed no significant
change over the five decades covered by the study.
Besides examining sexual behavior, the researchers also
looked at changes in the attitudes of young people relating to sexual
behavior. Results indicate that young people have become more approving of
premarital sex over the years. Young women in the late 1950s overwhelmingly
disapproved of premarital sex, with only 12% approving. A whopping 73%
approved by the 1980s. For young men the figure went from 40% approval in
the 1950s to 79% by the 1980s.
Consistent with changes in attitude toward premarital
sex, researchers found a decrease in sexual guilt among young people of
both genders. Once again, females showed the most dramatic changes in
attitudes toward sex.
An interesting question concerns the nature of the
relationship between the attitudes and sexual behavior of young people. If
changes in behavior preceded changes in attitude, it might be inferred that
changes in behavior were affecting attitudes. If, on the other hand,
attitudes were changing first, the reverse might be the case, with changes
in attitudes bringing about behavior change. A third possibility is that
attitudes and behaviors changed in tandem. Results supported the latter
alternative: attitudes and behavior changed simultaneously, particularly
among females.
These results, in my opinion, may be viewed as a mixed
bag. Clearly, a move away from guilt-ridden and restrictive norms of sexual
behavior among young adults may be seen as a positive development.
Premarital sex between consenting young people, although often discouraged
by societal institutions, seems quite normal, and healthy for most. While
there might be good reasons for some to delay becoming sexually active,
guilt is not one of them. Guilt and self-condemnation for performing such
acts seems quite unhealthy.
Unfortunately, engaging more freely in sexual activities in the age of
HIV/AIDS poses a particular hazard to young people who might not have been
adequately informed about the risks and methods of avoiding contracting
STDs. Young people are notoriously naive in assessing risks, and often
behave as if they are impervious to danger. Perhaps the present
understanding of the trends in the attitudes and sexual behavior of young
people could serve as a reminder of the importance of educating our young
people to the risks and responsibilities that go along with the greater
sexual freedom they now enjoy.
Dr. Catalanello is a licensed psychologist in his home State of Louisiana, USA, and a member of the Faculty of Liberal Arts at Asian University,
Chonburi. You may address questions and comments to him at [email protected], or post on his weblog at
http://asianupsych.blogspot.com
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