Monthly Archives: March 2011

It’s All About the Benjamins: Or, How the Bernanke Market Could Kill Nascent Graham Fund Managers

Posted on March 30, 2011 by Ray Galkowski, CFA

The Wall Street Journal published an interesting OpEd piece by Mark Spitznagle today. It described Benjamin Bernanke and Benjamin Graham’s conflicting views of markets. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704425804576220983131318962.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop Two disparate views of markets represent well the range of opinion among U.S. stock market participants … Continue reading →

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Are We Near the Top Yet? Momentum Investing and the Anne Hathaway Effect

Posted on March 28, 2011 by Ray Galkowski, CFA

Today, on the same day that the New York Times published a piece that asked if investors were investing like it was 1999, Herb Greenberg produced a piece on CNBC that questioned the same thing. Make no mistake, this is a momentum … Continue reading →

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There’s Always Something to Do

Posted on March 22, 2011 by Ray Galkowski, CFA

Christopher Risso-Gill has written a biography of Canadian Peter Cundill, legendary value investor of the Cundill Value Fund. In it, Gill quotes Irving Kahn–another legendary value investor: “There’s always something to do. You just need to look harder, be creative … Continue reading →

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Coyote Blog and Rational Optimism

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Ray Galkowski, CFA

Readers know that I think Matt Ridley’s The Rational Optimist offers calm, clear-headed reasons to dismiss the frequent predictions of the apocalypse.  This post from Coyote Blog is in the same mold:   Great Moments in Alarmism March 18, 2011, 10:42 … Continue reading →

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Aswath Damodaran’s Conversion on the Road to Chicago

Posted on March 14, 2011 by Ray Galkowski, CFA

In a recent blogpost, Aswath Damodaran talks about his conversion on the road to Chicago (that is, his acceptance of reality as it is versus his belief in reality as stipulated by Eugene Fama of the University of Chicago). Enjoy: … Continue reading →

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One Lesson that Starbucks Can Teach Us

Posted on March 13, 2011 by Ray Galkowski, CFA

Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, has a lesson for investors in Salesforce.com and Netflix:   After decades of breakneck expansion under Mr. Schultz, tight-fisted consumers abandoned it. The company’s sales and share price sank so low (between December 2006 and December … Continue reading →

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Tobin’s Q Ratio and the Shiller, Graham, & Dodd Price-to-Trailing 10-Year Earnings Ratio

Posted on March 8, 2011 by Ray Galkowski, CFA

Both ratios show that conditions in the US stock market are getting frothy.    Shiller’s ratio is the same as the one created by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd in 1934. It is self-explanatory. If we ignore the outrageous peak in the … Continue reading →

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Bad News: Government Handouts Make Up 35% of All Wages

Posted on March 8, 2011 by Ray Galkowski, CFA

This is much worse than I thought.  http://www.cnbc.com/id/41969508 Even as the economy has recovered, social welfare benefits make up 35 percent of wages and salaries this year, up from 21 percent in 2000 and 10 percent in 1960, according to … Continue reading →

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Santangel’s Review…

Posted on March 8, 2011 by Ray Galkowski, CFA

…is a publication that tries to identify excellent, unknown investment managers. I have placed a link to their website in the resources section to the right. In the comment below they wonder how many David Einhorns there are who never got the … Continue reading →

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Father Jude Michael Krill and Behavioral Finance

Posted on March 6, 2011 by Ray Galkowski, CFA

This may be the only time that I will mix investing with anything to do with religion, but it struck me as appropriate, even consilient. My parish, which is Roman Catholic, has been blessed to have the services of three … Continue reading →

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