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Data Update 5 for 2023: The Earnings Test

Musings on Markets

Finally, I look at the aggregated values across all companies on all three income measures, across all global companies, again broken down by sector: Collectively, global companies reported $16.9 billion in gross profit in the last twelve months leading into 2023, but operating income drops off to $6.4

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Data Update 6 for 2023: A Wake up call for the Indebted?

Musings on Markets

In this post, I will focus on corporate debt in 2023, keeping in mind that it was a year where the tradeoffs changed, as interest rates rose to pre-2008 levels, and putting at risk those firms that had borrowed to capacity, or even beyond, at low interest rates.

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Market Resilience or Investors In Denial? A Mid-year Assessment for 2023!

Musings on Markets

I am just not good at it, and the first six months of 2023 illustrate why market timing is often the impossible dream, something that every investor aspires to be successful at, but very few succeed on a consistent basis. Markets, as is their wont, live to surprise, and the first six months of 2023 has wrong-footed the experts (again).

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Data Update 1 for 2023: Setting the table!

Musings on Markets

For example, I have seen it asserted that a stock that trades at less than book value is cheap or that a stock that trades at more than twenty times EBITDA is expensive. In January 2023, I ended up with 47,913 publicly traded firms in my sample , with the pie chart below providing a geographic breakdown. Debt breakdown 2.

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Data Update 1 for 2024: The data speaks, but what does it say?

Musings on Markets

Beta & Risk 1. Equity Risk Premiums 2. Standard Deviation in Equity/Firm Value 2. Book Value Multiples 3. Employee Count & Compensation I nvesting Principle Financing Principle Dividend Principle Hurdle Rate Project Returns Financing Mix Financing Type Cash Return Dividends/Buyback s 1. Buybacks 2.

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Data Update 5 for 2024: Profitability - The End Game for Business?

Musings on Markets

In my last three posts, I looked at the macro (equity risk premiums, default spreads, risk free rates) and micro (company risk measures) that feed into the expected returns we demand on investments, and argued that these expected returns become hurdle rates for businesses, in the form of costs of equity and capital.

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