Contributors
By Journal of Indexes Staff | October 21, 2008

David Blitzer is the chairman of the S&P 500 Index Committee and a member of Standard & Poor's Investment Policy Committee and Economic Forecast Council. He previously served as corporate economist at McGraw-Hill and as senior economic analyst with National Economic Research Associates. Blitzer is the author of Outpacing the Pros: Using Indexes to Beat Wall Street's Savviest Money Managers, McGraw-Hill, 2001.

Nicholas Brooks is responsible for research and investment strategy for the ETF Securities group of companies. Prior to joining ETF Securities, he worked at Henderson Global Investors, where he was senior economist and market strategist on the global asset allocation, economics and strategy team based in London. Brooks has a B.A. from Brown University, an M.A. from Columbia University and an MSc in Economics (with Distinction) from the University of London.

Gary Gastineau is a managing member of Managed ETFs LLC, a firm interested in launching actively managed ETFs, and a partner in Skyhawk Management, the advisor to a market-neutral hedge fund that buys ETFs and sells them short. He is the author of The Exchange-Traded Fund Manual, as well as Someone Will Make Money on Your Funds-Why Not You? (A Better Way to Select Mutual and Exchange-Traded Funds). He is a frequent contributor to the Journal of Indexes.

Craig Israelsen is an associate professor at Brigham Young University. He is a principal at Target Date Analytics LLC, a firm that has developed indexes for the benchmarking and evaluation of target date/life cycle funds. Israelsen is the developer of the 7Twelve Portfolio (www.7TwelvePortfolio.com). Israelsen holds a Ph.D. in Family Resource Management from Brigham Young University and an M.S. in Agricultural Economics from Utah State University. He previously taught personal and family finance at the University of Missouri.

Paul Kaplan, CFA, is vice president of quantitative research at Morningstar, Inc. He led the development of quantitative methodologies behind the Morningstar Rating^TM for funds, the Morningstar Style Box^TM and the Morningstar family of indexes. He joined Morningstar in 1999 from Ibbotson Associates. Kaplan holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics, economics, and computer science from New York University and a master's degree and doctorate in economics from Northwestern University.

Michael W. Masters is a long/short equity hedge fund portfolio manager. In 1994, he founded Masters Capital Management, Inc. (later merged into Masters Capital Management, LLC) and remains the managing member of the successor company today. Masters Capital Management is a global investment management firm that trades and invests in public and private domestic and international bonds and equities. He is a 1989 graduate of the University of Tennessee (Knoxville) and holds a B.S. in Finance.

Larry Swedroe is principal and director of research for Buckingham Asset Management, LLC, a Registered Investment Advisor firm in St. Louis, Mo. He is also principal of BAM Advisor Services, LLC, a service provider to investment advisors across the country. Swedroe holds an M.B.A. in Finance and Investment from NYU. He is the author of several books, of which The Only Guide to Alternative Investments You'll Ever Need is the most recent.