Buffett’s Wild Ride

17 Oct 2016

Warren Buffett is rightly considered the most successful investor of all-time.  Not only has his holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, grown at a much higher rate than the overall market, he’s managed to earn exceptional returns for much longer than others who have also earned high returns. I was only able to pull data from 1987, but the last 29 years have been extraordinary for Buffett and his fellow shareholders.  Over this… Read More

Earnings Season is Upon Us

15 Jul 2016

As you can see in the chart below, earnings season is upon us.  While 31 companies have already reported, a full 421 companies report in the next three weeks, leaving the last 48 companies to report during the rest of August and September. Analysts aren’t expecting much out of earnings season and think that earnings will decline by -5.6 percent. According to FactSet, it will be the first time that the S&P… Read More

Are Markets Getting More Volatile?

08 Apr 2015

I’ve had the feeling recently that stocks were more volatile than usual.  As funny as this may sound, I don’t trust my own gut at all.  Despite its size, my gut is no better than anyone else’s at creating hunches that are worth a darn, so I turn to data frequently. To address my intuition, I did a quick check of the average volatility for the first quarter compared to… Read More