Musings on Markets

JULY 17, 2023

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).

Marketability

Global Finance

JUNE 18, 2024

Hyundai’s IPO is being managed by investment banks Kotak Securities, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and HSBC. This includes the IPO of OYO, India’s most successful hospitality startup that is looking to raise $1 billion and Ola Electric, another venture backed start up manufacturing electric scooters, looking to raise approximately $600 million.

Marketability

Global Finance

MAY 8, 2024

In the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region last year—as in 2022—net interest margin (NIM) dynamics were optimal for banks in Southeast Asia, Australasia, Hong Kong and India. Lending rates followed central bank tightening moves, while deposit rates lagged; and across the region, there were some record profits.

Banking

Musings on Markets

NOVEMBER 1, 2023

I was planning to start this post by telling you that Tesla was back in the news, but that would be misleading, since Tesla never leaves the news. I profited mightily on that investment, but I sold too soon , when Tesla's market capitalization hit $150 billion, and just before COVID put the company on a new price orbit.

Start-ups

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 21, 2023

I will follow up by looking at the mechanics that connect stock prices to inflation, and examine why the damage from higher inflation can vary across companies and sectors. The Year in Review At the start of 2022, the S&P 500 was at 4766.18, up from 3756.07 at the start of that year. Stocks: The What?

Equity

Musings on Markets

OCTOBER 4, 2021

Since so much of Paytm’s success has been driven by the rise if smart phone usage among Indian consumers, and the concurrent rise in mobile payments for goods and services, I will start with a review of that rise, before looking at how Paytm has put itself in position to take advantage of that market shift.

Start-ups

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 27, 2022

By the end of 2021, it was clear that this bout of inflation was not as transient a phenomenon as some had made it out to be, and the big question leading in 2022, for investors and markets, is how inflation will play out during the year, and beyond, and the consequences for stocks, bonds and currencies.

Risk-free Rate

Musings on Markets

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

In the last year or so, Chinese tech companies, including shining stars like Alibaba, Tencent and Didi have also woken up to this recognition, and investors have had to readjust their expectations for these companies. As China's economy has grown, its financial markets have also found their footing, albeit at a slower pace.

Market Capitalization

Valutico

JANUARY 3, 2024

goes back to the launch of the BankAmericard, a consumer credit program by Bank of America in 1958. The program was led by Mr. Dee Hock’s vision to bring together various banks as members of a “non-stock, for profit membership corporation” and operate credit cards under the ‘Visa’ franchise. billion (up 15% y-o-y).

Discounted Cash Flow

Reynolds Holding

APRIL 4, 2022

Seeing these ads reminded me that, in the lead-up to the financial crisis, subprime lender AmeriQuest advertised in the Super Bowl. The dot-com bubble burst, though, created significant tremors in our markets. As in other start-up fields, many projects likely could fail. It went defunct in 2007.

Marketability

Reynolds Holding

NOVEMBER 13, 2022

A lighter regulatory touch may be appropriate if markets have efficient price discovery. To identify efficient pricing, we start with the end point: the public company. Shares listed on a national exchange with sufficient market capitalization and trading volume attract the attention of institutional investors and analysts.

Banking

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 9, 2021

The second was that, starting mid-year in 2020, equity markets and the real economy moved in different directions, with the former rising on the expectations a post-virus future, and the latter languishing, as most of the world continued to operate with significant constraints.

Risk Premium

Reynolds Holding

APRIL 7, 2024

These standards have since been finalised and companies are expected to start disclosing against them as early as 2024. These high scores may reflect a regulatory drive: in 2021, the Taiwanese Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) set out guidelines for banks that encouraged domestic banks to disclose climate risks in line with TCFD.

Finance

Chris Mercer

AUGUST 1, 2022

This 2008 version had information on 477 restricted stock transactions, up from 430 transactions in the 2004 version. There were 231 transactions after April 1997, when the SEC’s period of restriction was reduced from two years to one year (up from 182 transactions in the 2004 version). Conclusion.

Dividends

Reynolds Holding

OCTOBER 21, 2024

The markets have moved to overwhelmingly trade electronically, with transaction volume in listed equities tripling in the last 17 years. [3] 3] A large and growing portion of the market is being transacted off-exchange in the dark markets. equity markets are critical to American families saving for their future.

Equity

Musings on Markets

MAY 7, 2023

I also used the banking framework to argue that good banks have stickier deposits, with a higher precent of these deposits being non-interest bearing, that they invest in loans and investment securities on which they earn interest rates that cover and exceed the default risk in these investments. All Equity, All the time!

Banking

Musings on Markets

MARCH 19, 2022

The Lead In To understand the market effects of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, we need to start with an assessment of the two countries, and their places in the global political, economic and market landscape, leading in.

Start-ups

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 19, 2022

In a post at the start of 2021 , I argued that while stocks entered the year at elevated levels, especially on historic metrics (such as PE ratios), they were priced to deliver reasonable returns, relative to very low risk free rates (with the treasury bond rate at 0.93% at the start of 2021). The year that was.

Risk Premium

Musings on Markets

FEBRUARY 16, 2024

If you start enumerating every risk a business is exposed to, you will find yourself being overwhelmed by that list, and it is for that reason that I categorize risk into the groupings that I described in an earlier post on risk.

Risk Premium

Musings on Markets

FEBRUARY 27, 2023

That may reflect the concern that once a person or entity starts borrowing to fund its needs, it is easy to overuse debt, and risk its wellbeing in the process. In that case, the optimal debt ratio for a company is the one that maximizes value, not necessarily the one at which the cost of capital is minimized.

Equity

Musings on Markets

MARCH 25, 2021

The second and more powerful factor is that the reason that a central bank is able to signal to markets, only if it has credibility, since the signal is more about what the Fed sees, using data that only it might have, about inflation and real growth in the future. In particular, the Fed's own assessments of real growth of 6.5%

Equity

Musings on Markets

DECEMBER 10, 2023

We will then follow up with a framework for thinking about how key people can affect the value of a business, with practical suggestions on valuing and pricing key people. In businesses like banking, consulting or the law, rainmakers can represent a significant portion of value, and their departure can be not just damaging but catastrophic.

Key Person Discount

Cooley M&A

FEBRUARY 1, 2024

Carve out tech acquisitions also continued to be attractive to strategic and private equity buyers, with GTCR’s acquisition of a majority stake in Worldpay from FIS for up to $18.5 Continuing the trend we noted for 2022 , sponsors increasingly used private credit sources in lieu of the syndicated debt markets to finance buyouts in 2023.

Equity

Musings on Markets

FEBRUARY 4, 2023

The Lead In As noted in the introductory paragraph, I start from a position of ignorance about the Adani Group, and it thus made sense to fill in that gap. First, they are infrastructure businesses , requiring large up-front investments and having long gestation periods, with regulatory and government oversight.

Start-ups

Harvard Corporate Governance

JUNE 15, 2024

In addition, Rule 14a-8 only allows for a supporting statement of up to 500 words. go back) 9 To earn the package, Musk also excessively enriched Tesla shareholders, increasing Tesla’s market capitalization by $735 billion. (go go back) 10 In Firefighters’ Pension System of the City of Kansas City, Missouri Trust v. go back)

Dividends

Reynolds Holding

JULY 25, 2023

This sort of global governance consensus, concerted follow-up, and concrete action plan does not exist for any other prospective component of ESG and is unlikely to exist because governments differ on social values and differ on trade-offs of social rights for economic development. As of year-end 2021, proved crude oil reserves in the U.S.

Equity

Musings on Markets

MAY 3, 2025

I started the month on a trip to Latin America, just as the tariff story hit my newsfeed and the market reacted with a sell off that knocked more than $9 trillion in market cap for global equities in the next two days. Equities: Storm Clouds gather (and dissipate)!

Marketability

Musings on Markets

APRIL 20, 2025

"Buying the dip" falls into a broad group of investment strategies that can be classified as "contrarian", where investors act in contrast to what the rest of the market is doing at the time, buying (selling) when the vast majority are selling (buying) , and it has been around through all of market history.

Start-ups

Musings on Markets

OCTOBER 28, 2024

That was the thought that came to mind, as I was writing about the US government's plans to break up big tech, and chronicling how much the big tech companies have struggled, trying to enter new businesses, notwithstanding the capital and brainpower that they have at their disposal.

Start-ups

Equidam

APRIL 22, 2025

10] Initial Public Offerings (IPOs): While the ultimate pricing of an IPO is determined by public market demand and conditions, pre-IPO valuations set by late-stage private rounds guide expectations and internal planning. [11] Its components, derived from the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), move with broader economic trends. [23]

Discounted Cash Flow

Mckinsey and Company

JUNE 20, 2025

Using company-level data across all sectors in the United States, Bloom and his team found that R&D productivity declined in general, with output measures including revenue, market capitalization, employment, and revenue per employee. Too many companies end up in pilot purgatory. In this way, speed is a strategy.

EBIT

Musings on Markets

FEBRUARY 6, 2025

It is for this reason that I chose to compute returns differently, using the following constructs: I included all publicly traded stocks in each market, or at least those with a market capitalization available for them. I converted all of the market capitalizations into US dollars , just to make them comparable.

Risk Premium

Reynolds Holding

JANUARY 27, 2025

New bank formation in the United States is at an all-time low, and Americans increasingly rely on non-bank financial technology companies (fintechs) to satisfy their financial services needs. New market entrants increase market participation and enhance competition, benefitting both consumer and commercial users of banking services.

Banking