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Data Update 4 for 2024: Danger and Opportunity - Bringing Risk into the Equation!

Musings on Markets

In particular, there are wide variations in how risk is measured, and once measured, across companies and countries, and those variations can lead to differences in expected returns and hurdle rates, central to both corporate finance and investing judgments.

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Marking Time: A new year, a fresh semester and its class time!

Musings on Markets

Corporate Finance : Corporate finance is the development of the first financial principles that govern how to run a business. It is that mission that makes corporate finance the ultimate big picture class, one that everyone (entrepreneurs, investors, analysts, business observers) should take.

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Data Update 4 for 2022: Risk = Danger + Opportunity!

Musings on Markets

The other is the dangerous notion that measuring risk is the same as managing that risk and, in some cases, the even more insane view that it removes that risk. In corporate finance, this takes the form of a hurdle rate , a minimum acceptable return on an investment, for it to be funded.

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

Musings on Markets

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. In computing the latter, I used the current debt ratios for firms, but made no attempt to evaluate whether these mixes were "right" or not.

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

Musings on Markets

In my corporate finance class, I describe all decisions that companies make as falling into one of three buckets – investing decisions, financing decision and dividend decisions. Beta & Risk 1. Equity Risk Premiums 2. Financing Flows 5. Return on Equity 1. Debt Ratios & Fundamentals 1.

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Data Update 1 for 2023: Setting the table!

Musings on Markets

Check rules of thumb : Investing and corporate finance are full of rules of thumb, many of long standing. When valuing or analyzing a company, I find myself looking for and using macro data (risk premiums, default spreads, tax rates) and industry-level data on profitability, risk and leverage. Cost of Equity 1.

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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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