Tag Archives: Debt Crisis

Relationship Between Stock Returns and Interest Rate Movements

I try to find evidence that refutes my theses on expected market returns to avoid behavioral traps. This graph from JP Morgan Asset Management’s research team offers some optimism for equities for rolling two-year periods if the Fed starts to … Continue reading

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Contemporary Art Auctions Reach Records

Liquidity, both physical and financial, tends to take the path of least resistance. If it is easy for corporations to borrow in public debt markets because high liquidity keeps interest rates low (in the near term), corporations that lack ideas for organic … Continue reading

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“Continued Signs of Financial Market Excess”

From a report on CNBC.com (http://www.cnbc.com/id/102009066): “There was one additional dissenter for the September statement. Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser voted against the position in July, and he was joined this month by Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher. ‘President Fisher … Continue reading

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There was No “De-Leveraging”

Ray Dalio of Bridgewater is fond of calling our government bailout a “beautiful deleveraging” (http://www.bwater.com/Uploads/FileManager/research/deleveraging/an-in-depth-look-at-deleveragings–ray-dalio-bridgewater.pdf) probably because he bet correctly that the flood of liquidity would lift all boats in the short run. But, I have been arguing the point in … Continue reading

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This is the Worst Recovery in the Post WWII Era

I think my former Wall Street colleagues know this without the need to read a chart. I added Sufi and Mian’s blog to the economics blogroll on the right after seeing the CFA Institute’s webcast of Sufi’s presentation at a conference … Continue reading

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The Market and the Economy Mid-Year 2014: A Top-Down View

I have excerpted part of PAR’s semi-annual letter that PAR sent to clients on July 7, 2014, and I have pasted it below. No one knows where the market is going to end up in the near term, but over the … Continue reading

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“…the prime directive will be to ‘lose as little money as possible’.” Jason Zweig Interviews Dean LeBaron

The WSJ published another excellent The Intelligent Investor column today written by Jason Zweig. In it, Jason interviews Dean LeBaron, retired founder of Batterymarch Financial Management. “For decades, the name of the game for investors has been to make as … Continue reading

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The Stock Market: Looking in from the Outside

We are nearly halfway through 2013 and the S&P 500 Total Return Index is on pace to deliver a return of over 47% for the year. In the last 188 years of stock market activity, the market delivered an annual return of … Continue reading

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How Safe are the Assets that You Trusted to Your Custodian? Jason Zweig

I am a risk manager and credit analyst by training (actually, I think I was born that way), so when I created my hedge fund over three years ago, one of the first questions I asked the partner of (large, … Continue reading

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Howard Marks in Barrons. Is a Retraction/Correction Coming?

I do not think that Barron’s front page headline in this week’s magazine accurately reflects Howard Marks’ thinking. Marks’ latest full-length memo (he is famous for his memos) seems to be a LOT more cautious and a LOT less sanguine about markets, especially debt markets, than the … Continue reading

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