The Equifax Breach: What to do Now
As soon as Equifax announced that they had been hacked and that 143 million consumers were affected, I assumed that I was one of them – and not just because nearly one out of every two Americans was impacted. I use www.mint.com to track my monthly income and expenses and one of the features that they offer is information about your credit score once per month. It’s a great feature because… Read More
Cliff Asness Says, Fire Your Mechanic
This article was originally published on June 3, 2014. In my humble opinion, it holds up well; although I am disappointed that value stocks still haven’t turned around more than three years later. As much as I don’t like that fact, however, the central thesis of my article is that these strategies can underperform for long periods of time. One of my favorite people in our industry is Cliff Asness,… Read More
New and Improved: The Shiller PE Ratio
Longtime Daily Insights readers are no strangers to the Shiller PE-ratio, a valuation metric that uses ten years of inflation-adjusted earnings to evaluate the cheapness or richness of the stock market – a search of the term on our website yields more than a dozen results. I’m very proud to say that our understanding of the Shiller PE is now greatly expanded, thanks to our own Ryan Craft. In the past,… Read More
Forecasting Expected Returns
“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” -Warren Buffet How can investors know the value of an investment? Bond yields remain very low and stocks continue to climb higher across the globe. Using typical valuation measures, markets everywhere look very expensive. However, investors continue to pour money into them, so they must see value. The value of an investment is subject to an uncertain future, so how… Read More
What the Hell is Bitcoin, Anyway?
In 2013, when Bitcoin prices were surging, a few readers asked me to write about Bitcoin. I didn’t know much about it and didn’t write the article because I thought that Bitcoins didn’t seem legitimate, but they’re on a tear ago, so I’m giving it a shot. Bitcoin is the first, largest and best-known crypto-currency. But what is a crypto-currency? That’s a harder question. To answer it for myself, I… Read More
Is Volatility Too High? Goldilocks Says it’s Just Right
Well, I am fresh back from vacation in Northern Michigan. I had the pleasure of driving over the Upper Peninsula twice during this trip to pick up one of my daughter’s from camp. That’s three trips over the UP this summer, but, sadly, only one pasty. From my perch up north, the big story for me was seeing volatility spike up for the first time in what seems like forever…. Read More
Getting to Know Your Volatility
After a summer of historically low and realized volatility in the market, we finally saw a sharp spike in volatility as tensions rose between North Korea and the US last week. While the exact cause and timing behind the volatility could not have been predicted, we did know that the low levels of volatility would not continue forever. Whether or not volatility is back for a while, it is always… Read More
Participant Insights 1Q 2017
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Participant Insights 2Q 2016
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The End of LIBOR
LIBOR’s reign as “The World’s Most Important Number” is almost over and the banking world is in for a period of transition as a result. The problem isn’t because of dwindling usage, but because of issues in the way it has been calculated and manipulated over time. While LIBOR is used as a reference rate in a wide range of lending products, it is actually calculated from a survey of… Read More