Department
Finance.
Investing, markets, and financial thinking.
Lately on the shelf
30 of 577Lefsetz on Costco
I’m categorically against self-checkout. I mean I’m already doing all the work. But it’s even worse, the machines are so theft-avoidant that you’ve got to follow a specific routine, not only scanning the item, but placing it on a platform to register its weigh…
Update on oil prices, the blockade and the Canadian Dollar
A recording from Robin J Brooks's live video
Top clicks this week on Abnormal Returns
Thanks for checking in with us this weekend. Here are the most clicked on items on Abnormal Returns for the week ended...
10 Sunday Reads
Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures: • Trump and prediction markets are building a society of suckers: The gamification of everything — politics, policy, sports — is producing a population that confuses betti…
Why is the Canadian Dollar so Weak?
The rise in global oil prices should have given the Canadian Dollar a big lift, but it didn't
Saturday links: serious randomized trials
Saturdays we catch up with the non-finance related items that we didn’t get to earlier in the week. You can check out...
Shadow government bond yields in the G10
A recording from Robin J Brooks's live video
MiB: Lori Heinel, Global Chief Investment Officer at State Street Investment Management
This week, I speak with Lori Heinel, Global Chief Investment Officer at State Street Investment Management. We discuss her unlikely journey from majoring in religious studies at Princeton to working in finance and investing. She tells us about her role as CIO…
10 Weekend Reads
The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of Danish Blend coffee, grab a seat outside, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads: • On Quality: An ode to Pirsig: What quality is and how it is degraded. Every investigation I’ve published documents the same…
Foreign Ownership of Government Debt
You can use your central bank to cap yields, but you can't make foreigners buy your debt
Industry Momentum
... its everywhere!
Picking Stocks in a Bloodbath
Is Netflix a buy here? Or is it a stock in secular decline? The post Picking Stocks in a Bloodbath appeared first on A Wealth of Common Sense. ...
Friday links: assessing your risk appetite
Tariffs, Yet Again
Overnight, the Trump Administration announced a new, massive set of tariffs, claiming authorization by Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. The full list of the 60 countries tariffs were levied on is at The Independant. These are as likely unlawful as the IEE…
Chinese Exports Hid Manufacturing's Deglobalisation.
Manufacturing slowbalisation was actually delocalisation (mostly to China).
The CAPE That Cried Wolf: Has the Standard Market-Valuation Metric Broken Down?
For decades, the Cyclically Adjusted Price-Earnings (CAPE) ratio—pioneered by Nobel laureate Robert Shiller—has been the gold standard for evaluating equity market valuations.
10 Friday AM Reads
My end-of-week morning reads: • The Credit Market Lens: Rich Spreads, Cheap Treasuries, and an Incomplete Explanation: The evolution of credit spreads remains driven primarily by credit fundamentals, investor risk appetite, flows, and broader market technicals…
War in a World awash with Debt
When you're running out of fiscal space, the last thing you need is war
Pets are soooo worth it
It is well-established that owning pets, on average, makes people happier.
Investing in the Boom Times
Some lessons from investors in South Korea. The post Investing in the Boom Times appeared first on A Wealth of Common Sense. ...
Thursday links: the Bitcoin backlash
Periods of financial stress - the long history
A paper that has not received much attention focuses on measures of systemic risk in "Systemic Risk Measures: From the Panics of 1907 to the Banking Stress of 2023". Much of the data from this paper is available from V-lab. The work suggests that there have be…
SRISK around the globe - Look at China
There is concern about the risk in the current markets given the high valuations. In a perfect world, investors would like early warnings of market stress as an indicator that it is time to rebalance portfolios. Identifying different stress indicators will all…
Longform links: knowing stuff
Thursdays are all about longform links on Abnormal Returns. Wherever possible, free links for premium sites are used. You can check out...
Private Markets Have a Diversification Problem. Can CFOs Help Investors Manage Risk? Collateralized fund obligations may offer a more efficient way to reshape private market risk.
Private markets have transformed from a niche corner of institutional finance into a core portfolio allocation.
Vanguard: The Costliest Mistakes Even Experienced Investors Make
I have been fortunate to get to know Joe Davis, chief economist at investing giant Vanguard, over the years. He has been on MiB a few times, and I have referenced his research many times. I had been to the VG campus a few times before — once to interview Jack…
10 Thursday AM Reads
My morning reads: • Tesla’s Cratering Cybertruck Sales Evoke Ford Edsel Comparisons: Both automakers expected consumers to buy hundreds of thousands of their futuristic models per year. Tesla’s pickup is missing the mark by a wider margin. (Bloomberg) • Bitcoi…
Why Are Oil Prices Rising so Slowly?
After $200 oil didn't happen a few months ago, markets are now "once bitten, twice shy"
Attracting investor flows through customer data
For decades, Meta, Alphabet and others have mined customer data to sell ads and other products to business customers.