2025 Finance Risk Premium 
Musings on Markets
JULY 31, 2025
At the start of July, I updated my estimates of equity risk premiums for countries, in an semiannual ritual that goes back almost three decades. In May 2025, Moody's downgraded the United States, bringing them in line with the other ratings agencies; S&P downgraded the US in 2011 and Fitch in 2023.
Equidam
JUNE 30, 2025
Strategy 2: Bridge to Better Times When down rounds seem inevitable but you believe the market correction is temporary, bridge financing can provide an alternative path. The post Down Round Valuation: How to Survive and Protect Your Equity (2025) appeared first on Equidam. Here’s how Equidam approaches this: 1.
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Musings on Markets
JUNE 2, 2025
That left Moody's, the third of the major sovereign ratings agencies, as the only one that persisted with a Aaa (Moody's equivalent of AAA) for the US, but that changed on May 16, 2025, when it too downgraded the US from Aaa (negative) to Aa1 (stable). In addition to more countries being rated, the ratings themselves have become richer.
Musings on Markets
JANUARY 10, 2025
It is the end of the first full week in 2025, and my data update for the year is now up and running, and I plan to use this post to describe my data sample, my processes for computing industry statistics and the links to finding them. In the table below, we compare the changes in regional market capitalizations (in $ millions) over time.
Musings on Markets
FEBRUARY 18, 2025
While I was working on my last two data updates for 2025, I got sidetracked, as I am wont to do, by two events. For those of you who are not finance professionals, but rely on them for advice, I hope this is a cautionary note on taking these professionals (consultants, appraisers, bankers) at their word.
Musings on Markets
FEBRUARY 23, 2025
That is where the cost of capital, the Swiss Army Knife of finance that I wrote about in my sixth data update update , comes into play as a debt optimizing tool. With state and local taxes added on, the US, at the start of 2025, had a marginal corporate tax rate of 25%, almost perfectly in line with a global norm.
Musings on Markets
FEBRUARY 8, 2025
In the first five posts, I have looked at the macro numbers that drive global markets, from interest rates to risk premiums, but it is not my preferred habitat. A few years ago, I wrote a paper for practitioners on the cost of capital , where I described the cost of capital as the Swiss Army knife of finance, because of its many uses.
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