Musings on Markets

AUGUST 5, 2025

A few weeks ago, I started receiving a stream of message about an Instagram post that I was allegedly starring in, where after offering my views on Palantir's valuation, I was soliciting investors to invest with me (or with an investment entity that had ties to me). An Easy Target? and more by two other forces.

Start-ups

Musings on Markets

APRIL 7, 2025

Note that while Canada and Mexico were not on the Wednesday list of tariff targets that was released on Wednesday, they have been targeted separately, and that the remaining countries that do not show up on this map (Russia and North Korea, for instance) are under sanctions that prevent them from trading in the first place.

Marketability

Musings on Markets

JULY 13, 2022

It has been my practice for the last two decades to take a detailed look at how risk varies across countries, once at the start of the year and once mid-year. Country Risk: Default Risk and Ratings For investors, the most direct measures of country risk come from measures of their capacity to default on their borrowings.

Risk Premium

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

SEPTEMBER 27, 2022

In my early 2021 posts on inflation, I argued that while the higher inflation that we were just starting to see could be explained by COVID and supply chain issues, prudence on the part of policy makers required that it be taken as a long term threat and dealt with quickly. in the NY Fed survey.

Risk Premium

Musings on Markets

MAY 6, 2022

In most time periods, those recalibrations and resets tend to be small and in both directions, resulting in the ups and downs that pass for normal volatility. Clearly, we are not in one of those time periods, as markets approach bipolar territory, with big moves up and down.

Risk Premium

Musings on Markets

FEBRUARY 11, 2023

By the same token, a country that is viewed as "first world" can lose that status, if people start perceiving the system as unfair, legal systems filled with delay and waster and a government that becomes capricious in its actions, or worse.

Risk Premium

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 30, 2023

Just as rising equity risk premiums push up the cost of equity, rising default spreads push up the cost of debt of companies, with the added complication of higher default risk for those companies that had pushed to the limits of their borrowing capacity in a low interest-rate environment.

Treasury

Musings on Markets

JULY 17, 2023

At the start of the year, the consensus of market experts was that this would be a difficult year for markets, given the macro worries about inflation and an impending recession, and adding in the fear of the Fed raising rates to this mix made bullishness a rare commodity on Wall Street.

Marketability

Musings on Markets

AUGUST 15, 2023

I took this estimation process for granted until 2008, when during that crisis, I woke up to the realization that no matter what the text books say about risk-free investments, there are times when finding an investment with a guaranteed return can become an impossible task. and the reverse will occur, when risk-free rates drop.

Risk-free Rate

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 27, 2022

Inflation: Measurement and Determinants As the inflation debate was heating up in the middle of last year, I wrote a comprehensive post on how inflation is measured, what causes it and how it affects returns on different asset classes. Rather than repeat much of that post, let me summarize my key points.

Risk-free Rate

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.

Equity

Brian DeChesare

MAY 3, 2023

When I started offering financial modeling training , I never expected to get questions about a methodology like the Dividend Discount Model (DDM). But people who aim for investment banking roles are very much into those bells and whistles, so questions about the DDM and other “exotic” methodologies began rolling in.

Dividends

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

Musings on Markets

MAY 24, 2021

Looking at US equities, the S&P 500 is up about 11% and the NASDAQ about 5%, from start of the year levels, and the underperformance of the latter has led to a wave of stories about whether this is start of the long awaited comeback of value stocks, after a decade of lagging growth stocks.

Treasury

Equilest

MARCH 17, 2022

We note that the higher the expected rate (in other words, the greater the risk is perceived as necessary, to the point of requiring a substantial "risk premium"), the lower the multiple that will apply and therefore the lower valuation: we buy cheaper which is less safe. 11% per year. 10% per year. around 1.5%). -

Business Valuation

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 27, 2021

In my last post , I described the wild ride that the price of risk took in 2020, with equity risk premiums and default spreads initially sky rocketing, as the virus led to global economic shutdowns, and then just as abruptly dropping back to pre-crisis levels over the course of the year.

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

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. Ukraine, a part of the Soviet Union, has had its shares of ups and downs, and its economic footprint is even smaller.

Start-ups

Musings on Markets

JULY 1, 2022

In this post, I will argue that almost everything that we are observing in markets, across asset classes, can be explained by a pull back on risk capital, and that understanding the magnitude of the pull back, and putting in historical perspective, is key to gauging what is coming next. Risk Capital: What is it?

Marketability

Musings on Markets

JULY 25, 2023

Since country risk is multidimensional and dynamic, my annual country risk update runs to more than a hundred (boring) pages , but I will try to summarize what the last year has brought in this post. Drivers of Country Risk What makes some countries riskier than others to operate a business in?

Risk Premium

Musings on Markets

FEBRUARY 16, 2024

I have no particular insights to offer on physical risk, other than to note that while taking on physical risks for some has become a leisure activity, I have no desire to climb Mount Everest or jump out of an aircraft.

Risk Premium

Musings on Markets

MARCH 28, 2022

That judgment may be harsh, but as the Russian hostilities in Ukraine shake up markets, the weakest links in the ESG chain are being exposed, and as the same old rationalizations and excuses get rolled out, I believe that a moment of reckoning is arriving for the concept. They are hypothetical questions, but I think I know the answer.

Start-ups

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. An Optimizing Tool In my second and third data posts for this year, I chronicled the effects of rising interest rates and risk premiums on costs of equity and capital.

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

JULY 24, 2024

After the 2008 market crisis, I resolved that I would be far more organized in my assessments and updating of equity risk premiums, in the United States and abroad, as I looked at the damage that can be inflicted on intrinsic value by significant shifts in risk premiums, i.e., my definition of a crisis.

Risk Premium

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 28, 2025

It was an interesting year for interest rates in the United States, one in which we got more evidence on the limited power that central banks have to alter the trajectory of market interest rates. We started 2024 with the consensus wisdom that rates would drop during the year, driven by expectations of rate cuts from the Fed.

Banking

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

There are strands of research in both behavioral finance and empirical studies that back up contrarian strategies, but as with everything to do with investing, it comes with caveats and constraints. In the third, constrained contrarianism , you buy the stocks that are down, but only if they pass your screens for qualify and safety.

Start-ups

Equidam

APRIL 22, 2025

2] Startups typically lack significant historical financial data, often operate with negative profits initially, rely heavily on private equity or venture capital rather than traditional bank loans, and face a much higher risk of failure. [1] 4] [5] [7] Each funding round (Pre-seed, Seed, Series A, B, C, etc.) 2] [15] [17].

Discounted Cash Flow

Reynolds Holding

MARCH 25, 2025

Thats what started in 1940. 19, 2015) (Chairs Opening Remarks) (The modern American investment company started in the 1920s with the end of certain state corporate laws that limited the growth of funds and with a desire of investors, particularly those of modest means, to invest in stocks by pooling their assets with those of others.

Corporate Finance

Equidam

APRIL 22, 2025

23] , [24] , [25] This average serves as a starting point, which is then adjusted upwards or downwards based on the specific startup’s relative strengths and weaknesses across several key criteria. [21] 23] Equidam uses country-specific risk-free rates (10-year government bonds) and market risk premiums (sourced from Damodaran). [23]

Discounted Cash Flow

Musings on Markets

FEBRUARY 6, 2025

The results, broken down broadly by geography are in the table below: As you can see, the aggregate market cap globally was up 12.17%, but much of that was the result of a strong US equity market. I aggregated the market capitalizations of all stocks at the end of 2023 and the end of 2024, and computed the percentage change.

Risk Premium