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Featured Blog Posts (128)

Stating the Obvious - OECD and ECRI

These four self explantatory charts from a recent Morgan Stanley European equity strategy report - Equity implications of rollover in growth leading indicators - could'nt provide a bigger sell signal.

Here's the OECD World leading indicator at a 34 year high...

… Continue

Added by Daniel Chow on February 8, 2010 at 8:42am — No Comments

A Fat Tail Risk Metric

I read an interesting paper by Peter Conti-Brown (read here:http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1548892) on a proposed Fat Tail Risk Metric (FTRM). Conti-Brown argues that a central cause of the financial crisis is the failure of risk models to account for high impact, low probability events i.e. fat tail events and proposes mandatory disclosure of a firm’s all exposures - contingent liabilities, such as guar… Continue

Added by Sachidanand (Sacha) Singh on February 8, 2010 at 2:30am — No Comments

We Are So Screwed

"Our immersion in the details of crises that have arisen over the past eight centuries and in data on them has led us to conclude that the most commonly repeated and most expensive investment advice ever given in the boom just before a financial crisis stems from the perception that 'this time is different.' "That advice, that the old rules of valuation no longer apply, is usually followed up with vigor. Financial professionals and, all too often, government leaders explain that we are doing… Continue

Added by Daniel Chow on February 2, 2010 at 3:45am — 2 Comments

You’re in Good Company

We recently concluded the Finance 3.0 member’s survey, and wanted to share the summary results with you, as well as announce the winners of our $50 cash prize. We hope you’ll enjoy finding out more about the types and profile of visitors to our community of over 50,000 registered members, and thousands more who've yet to sign up. In a nutshell, you will be pleased to know that you’re in good company… Let us start off by sharing with you with that visitors to Finance 3.0 are a very, very wel… Continue

Added by Finance 3.0 on February 1, 2010 at 2:30am — 4 Comments

Another Economic Bubble Burst Ahead?

Most economists would agree that just as there is much euphoria surrounding an economic boost for a country, there is also an implicit economic phobia with regards to its authenticity and sustainability in the longer term. Historical analyses of economic empires depict a cyclical trend of economic mayhem and plummeting after attainment of the pinnacle of distinctive economic super power status. As a matter of fact, the demise of these economic empires has been observed to occur immediately after… Continue

Added by Charles Horace Ampong on January 18, 2010 at 12:59pm — 1 Comment

2010 Market Probability & 5 Considerations

Barron's Michael Santoli, makes his perdictions based upon history. The past is never certain to be the future. But it's all we got, so why not us it? Michael gives an excellent summation. Is it 1931 or 1983? The bulls see the market mimicking 1983, the bears point to 1931. Those in the middle see many similarities with 2004. Barron's Michael Santoli reports. Not that 2010 is likely to disappoint. "We're back to an environment where the fundamentals have to c… Continue

Added by Bill M Wright on January 17, 2010 at 11:30pm — 6 Comments

USA Fun Tax Facts

How progressive is your tax structure? This chart illustrates the progressive structure of the federal income tax system as seen in the average tax rates (center column) computed from tax returns filed in 2007. For example, the top left block indicates that the top 1% of tax returns report… Continue

Added by Bill M Wright on January 13, 2010 at 11:00pm — 1 Comment

Book Recommendation Request

I have taken the liberty of shifting this from a message to this blog where: - there are various other book recommendations and - Medhi can hopefully get a wider range of responses to his good question "Can you suggest me some books for the following subject. Treasury and Fund Management Portfolio & Investment Management" My suggestions - and portfolio and investment management rather than Treasury is my field - start with the classic "Investment Policy: How to Win the Losers Game" by Ch… Continue

Added by Brent Wheeler on January 9, 2010 at 11:11pm — 2 Comments

How's Your Government Accounting & Marketing Skills ?

When your neighbor loses her job, it's a recession. When you lose your job, it's a depression. When federal workers not only keep their jobs but see their pay rise during a recession, it's a sign of the times. And when my home real-estate taxes rise 18% when my value falls 30% and the city tax gets raised I'm ready to ask all levels of government to make some layoffs and take some paycuts. How about you? Our State employees have taken about a 5% cut but our unionized teachers… Continue

Added by Bill M Wright on January 7, 2010 at 12:30am — No Comments

Financial reports and ratio analysis is not reliable...

Financial reports and Ratio Analysis is not a good measure to analyze performance of any organization. I know, I am quoting a very strong statement to put my point. This is just to make the topic more interesting. In most of the cases, book value of shares is just 10-20 % of the market value of the shares. Reason for the same is that financial reports are reported on book value basis and does not include intangible assets efficiently. There is lacuna in our financial and accounting system that w… Continue

Added by Amit Puggal on January 5, 2010 at 1:37pm — 5 Comments

The Case for Free Trade (Following the Mercantilism discussion)

A summary - by Milton and Rose Friedman, adapted from "Free to Choose" is set out below. It is worth paying attention to their demolition of the counter arguments - some of which are currently enjoying an attempt at revival.... The Case for Free Trade By Milton Friedman and Rose D. Friedman In international trade, Hoover fellow Charles Wolf Jr. argues above, deficits don't much matter. Here Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman discuss what does: freedom. A ringing statement of logic and principle.… Continue

Added by Brent Wheeler on January 5, 2010 at 4:00am — 6 Comments

Western World CO2 Prevented A ICE AGE Disaster

This video editorial on the topic of Global Warming came out over two years ago perdicting Climategate Data and Fear Mongering. At the time I was like the many sheep who wanted to blindly believe and trust it was all true and there were no real experts saying it was false. After all, the Global Warming Doom and Gloom Bandwagon Drums were ponding the loudest in 2007. I must confess I'm not one to listen to Glenn Beck and I like Al Gore and his movie. Did the Western… Continue

Added by Bill M Wright on January 4, 2010 at 3:30pm — No Comments

Is Gold a Financial Asset?

I have been bitten by the gold bug. Ever since RBI was reported to be buying IMF gold, I have been reading a number of papers / articles by economists, commodity analysts, economic historians, investment bankers and central bankers on matters related to gold. I think for next few weeks I will regularly be posting something connected with gold. While reading gold related material I found quite a few bankers / analysts referring to gold as a financial asset. For instance in a paper published in 2… Continue

Added by Sachidanand (Sacha) Singh on January 3, 2010 at 11:30pm — No Comments

The Partnership - Charles D. Ellis

I have worked with Goldman Sachs at various times - in investment banking work only though and thus have no personal knowledge of their performance in other areas. My experience aligns exactly with all Ellis writes in his new book on the firm. I thoroughly recommend it. Here is my review...... The Partnership - Charles D. Ellis There are few really classic books in finance - Le Fevre's "Reminiscences of a Stock Operator", Peter Bernstein's "Capital Ideas" and perhaps half a dozen others at mos… Continue

Added by Brent Wheeler on January 3, 2010 at 4:24am — No Comments

Chinese Mercantilism

Proximate cause of this post is Daniel’s pasting of the link to Krugman’s blog, where Krugman estimates, among other things, the loss of American jobs because of mercantilist policy pursued by China. Mercantilism was the favoured economic theory for building national wealth before advent of Adam Smith. It broadly prescribed accumulation of bullion through a positive balance of trade i.e. more exports and less import. Clearly all nations cannot practice mercantilism together as aggregate exports… Continue

Added by Sachidanand (Sacha) Singh on January 1, 2010 at 10:30am — 12 Comments

Where do we invest in recessionary period?

Every investor should keep three things (safety, liquidity and return) in his or her mind before investing in any investment options. Safety and liquidity have inverse relation with returns from the investment. Investor should also know how much he or she is trading off between aforesaid three things. I believe one of the main reasons for recession was investor’s greed and naked position in the market. Most of the people said investor could not get return in recessionary period. But according to… Continue

Added by Amit Puggal on January 1, 2010 at 2:07am — 2 Comments

Climategate...... continued

In his post on Climategate Bill has raised some compelling questions. My two cents. Why should the American taxpayers now be ask by the World Bank to give money to developing nations for global warming projects given three of those countries economies are in better shape than the USA. The USA should be asking for Aid from the world. Climate is changing because of emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the a… Continue

Added by Sachidanand (Sacha) Singh on January 1, 2010 at 2:27pm — 2 Comments

Agency Problem in Action

Bank of America (BoA) /Citi, they all are repaying TARP money. BoA has paid back the US government 45 billion dollars - the bail out cash infusion it had received. Buying back equity should be viewed like any other capital budgeting exercise. A firm should buy back equity if it has no worthwhile investments to make - this way it will need to service less equity. Equity in most cases is more expensive than debt and so it may at times make sense to raise debt to buy back equity. But BoA is not b… Continue

Added by Sachidanand (Sacha) Singh on December 21, 2009 at 9:23am — 3 Comments

GM Shall Rise From The Ashes

… Continue

Added by Bill M Wright on December 10, 2009 at 6:30pm — No Comments

U,V or W in the US and us

Will the global recovery be U shaped, V shaped or W shaped? U shaped recovery implies slow recovery, economy taking longer to reach the pre-crisis levels; V shaped implies faster recovery - economy overtakes the crisis in quick decisive moves; and W shaped implies the dreaded double dip - economy rises then falters again and then picks up. If the recovery is double dip, we are yet to see the second dip. Traders talked about V shaped recovery first; economists, practitioners of the dismal scienc… Continue

Added by Sachidanand (Sacha) Singh on December 9, 2009 at 2:30am — 6 Comments

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