Musings on Markets

JANUARY 19, 2022

If equity markets surprised us with their resilience in 2020, not just weathering a pandemic for the ages, but prospering in its midst, US equity markets, in particular, managed to find light even in the darkest news stories, and continued their rise through 2021. The year that was.

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Musings on Markets

FEBRUARY 15, 2023

billion in gross profit in the last twelve months leading into 2023, but operating income drops off to $6.4 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 and need income is only $4.3

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Musings on Markets

SEPTEMBER 27, 2022

By the start of 2022, the window for early action had closed and for much of this year, inflation has been the elephant in the room, driving markets and forcing central banks to be reactive, and its presence has already induced me to write three posts on its impact.

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Musings on Markets

FEBRUARY 27, 2023

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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Musings on Markets

JULY 17, 2023

I am not a market prognosticator for a simple reason. 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.

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Musings on Markets

JANUARY 21, 2023

It is the nature of stocks that you have good years and bad ones, and much as we like to forget about the latter during market booms, they recur at regular intervals, if for no other reason than to remind us that risk is not an abstraction, and that stocks don't always win, even in the long term.

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Musings on Markets

JANUARY 8, 2022

To start the year, I returned to a ritual that I have practiced for thirty years, and that is to take a look at not just market changes over the last year, but also to get measures of the financial standing and practices of companies around the world. Happy New Year, and I hope that 2022 brings you good tidings!

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Musings on Markets

JANUARY 17, 2024

Heading into 2023, US equities looked like they were heading into a sea of troubles, with inflation out of control and a recession on the horizon. In that post, I noted that if inflation subsided quickly, and the economy stayed out of a recession, stocks had upside, and that is the scenario that played out in 2023.

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Musings on Markets

JANUARY 6, 2023

Counter made-up numbers : It remains true that people (analysts, market experts, politicians) often make assertions based upon either incomplete or flawed data, or no data at all. Data universe : In my sample, I include all publicly traded firms with market capitalizations that exceed zero, traded anywhere in the world.

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Simply Treasury

AUGUST 2, 2022

The idea is not new to encourage companies to increase their capitalization and reduce their bank debt (partly through more recourse to the capital market - CMU project). The rate would be calculated based on a 10-year "risk-free interest" rate depending on the currency, increased by a 1% risk premium (1.5%

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Musings on Markets

AUGUST 15, 2023

Expected returns for Risky Investments : The risk-free rate becomes the base on which you build to estimate expected returns on all other investments. For instance, if you read my last post on equity risk premiums , I described the equity risk premium as the additional return you would demand, over and above the risk free rate.

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Musings on Markets

JANUARY 26, 2023

My last valuation of Tesla was in November 2021, towards its market peak, and given its steep fall from grace, in conjunction with Elon Musk's Twitter experiment, it is time for a revisit.

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Musings on Markets

JANUARY 5, 2024

Thus, looking at only the companies in the S&P 500 may give you more reliable data, with fewer missing observations, but your results will reflect what large market cap companies in any sector or industry do, rather than what is typical for that industry.

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Musings on Markets

FEBRUARY 16, 2024

Deconstructing Risk While we may use statistical measures like volatility or correlation to measure risk in practice, risk is not a statistical abstraction. Its impact is not just financial, but emotional and physical, and it predates markets. 4 & 5 Uninsurable Risk.

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Musings on Markets

JANUARY 31, 2024

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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Musings on Markets

FEBRUARY 2, 2023

Finally, my starting cost of capital of 10.15% reflects the reality that the riskfree rate and equity risk premiums have risen over 2022, and my ending number of 9% is an indication that I expect Tesla to become less risky over time. and 10.9%. It was the reason that I argued at a $1.2

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Musings on Markets

JULY 25, 2023

The other is pragmatic , since it is almost impossible to value a company or business, without a clear sense of how risk exposure varies across the world, since for many companies, either the inputs to or their production processes are in foreign markets or the output is outside domestic markets.

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