Tag Archives: Risk

B. Malkiel Cannot Believe His Own Eyes

“Over the past 100 years the returns from smaller companies have exceeded those of larger companies. It is also true that stocks with low valuations (i.e. lower prices relative to earnings and book values) have generated better returns than those … 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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Bloomberg Article on the Myopia of Buying a Vacation Home

When viewing a vacation home as an investment, most fail to account for all of the costs associated with home ownership. Even after the investment is sold, people overestimate their return because they fail to track all of the costs. In most … 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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What is the Effect of a Label? Smart Beta Makes Bill Sharpe “Sick”

Bill Sharpe gave us the Sharpe Ratio to help determine whether an active investment manager is “beating” the market after adjusting for the risk that the manager assumed. Sharpe is from the Efficient Market school of academia, which believes that markets are … Continue reading

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Howard Marks: The Top-Ten Qualities that Make Warren Buffett Different from Most Investors

The following are bullet points reproduced (and numbered by order of appearance) from Howard Marks’s Forward to the third edition of The Warren Buffett Way, by Robert G. Hagstrom. Marks writes a couple of paragraphs to elaborate on each bullet point, … Continue reading

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A Classic Example of Why Discipline and Wealth Go Hand-in-Hand

A great quote from The Warren Buffett Way, Third Edition, (2014) by Robert G. Hagstrom. The difference between Warren Buffett and most investors has more to do with discipline than just about any other quality. There are plenty of smart investors, … Continue reading

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Mohnish Pabrai Has Not Made an Investment in a New Idea in Over 18 Months

Forbes once identified Mohnish as one of the investment managers who could assume the value-investing guru mantle from Buffett. In his 2013 Annual Letter, Pabrai wrote that he has not found a new idea in which to invest in over eighteen … Continue reading

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