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Data Update 5 for 2023: The Earnings Test

Musings on Markets

To set the stage, I will start by laying out the differences measure of earnings that reported on an income statement: At the top of the profit ladder is gross income , the earnings left over after a company has covered the direct cost of producing whatever it sells.

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Data Update 1 for 2021: A (Data) Look Back at a Most Forgettable Year (2020)!

Musings on Markets

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.

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

Musings on Markets

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.

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

Musings on Markets

First, these categorizations were created close to twenty years ago, when I first started looking a global data, and many countries that were emerging markets then have developed into more mature markets now. Beta & Risk 1. Equity Risk Premiums 2. Standard Deviation in Equity/Firm Value 2. Return on Equity 1.

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Market Resilience or Investors In Denial? A Mid-year Assessment for 2023!

Musings on Markets

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.

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Data Update 1 for 2023: Setting the table!

Musings on Markets

In my last post, I talked about the ritual that I go through every year ahead of my teaching each spring, and in this one, I will start on the first of a series of posts that I make at the start of each year, where I look at data, both macro and company-level. That is not true!

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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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