4 Feb 2015

The Peril of Being Different

January was a tough month for value stocks, as the S&P 500 Value index fell by -4.57 percent compared to the S&P 500 index, which lost -3.00 percent. When stocks have a tough month, it’s axiomatic that mutual fund managers who invest in stocks also had a hard time. That was particularly true for one well-known value investor, Bruce Berkowitz, manager of the Fairholme Fund (FAIRX), which lost -9.83 percent… Read More

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3 Feb 2015

Inside the Belly of the Yield Curve

Yesterday, I wrote that the yield on the 30-year US Treasury closed at an all time low at 2.25 percent. I also wrote that the yield on the 10-year was 2.66 percent, which was completely wrong: it closed at 1.66 percent on Friday, I simply made a fat fingered mistake – sorry. This mistake notwithstanding, I was struck by the two yields because the all-time record-low yield on the 10-year… Read More

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2 Feb 2015

The Vastness of the Emerging Markets

There are only a handful of index providers globally and their intense competition breeds some very interesting innovation. Recently, one of the large providers, MSCI, launched a series of indexes that attempt to reflect the performance of companies based on their economic exposure rather than the location of their headquarters. When indexes were first created, most companies economic reach didn’t expand much beyond their own borders. Today, however, businesses are… Read More

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