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Data Update 5 for 2023: The Earnings Test

Musings on Markets

Some of that variation can be attributed to different mixes of businesses in different regions, since unit economics will result in higher gross margins for technology companies and commodity companies, in years when commodity prices are high, and lower gross margins for heavy manufacturing and retail businesses.

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

Musings on Markets

By focusing so much attention on a small subset of companies, you risk developing tunnel vision, especially when doing peer group comparisons. buy stocks that trade at less than book value or trade at PEG ratios less than one) for individual stocks.

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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. The market debt ratio, in contrast, uses the market's estimate of the value of equity, i.e., its market capitalization, as the value of equity.

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

Musings on Markets

In my second data update post from the start of this year , I looked at US equities in 2022, with the S&P 500 down almost 20% during the year and the NASDAQ, overweighted in technology, feeling even more pain, down about a third, during the year.

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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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Data Update 1 for 2023: Setting the table!

Musings on Markets

For example, I have seen it asserted that a stock that trades at less than book value is cheap or that a stock that trades at more than twenty times EBITDA is expensive. I do report on a few market-wide data items especially on risk premiums for both equity and debt. Equty Risk Premiums, by Country 4.

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The Zomato IPO: A Bet on Big Markets and Platforms!

Musings on Markets

It would be churlish on my part to take issue with the bloat and selective disclosure in Zomato's prospectus, since they are following the script that other technology companies around the world have written for going public, but it is frustrating to read through 420 pages, and still be left in the dark on key numbers.