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Post-Election Thoughts: Beware Confirmation Bias
The week before the election, I posted about the conflicting data points that indicated either a Romney or Obama victory was possible. I noted that the two data points that seemed to me most credible,...
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Who Said What, Again?
“I know that you believe that you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure that you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”...
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Whose Yachts?
I remain peeved that, more than four years after the beginning of a worldwide financial crisis brought on by the failure of large financial institutions to accurately report and responsibly manage...
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Moving On
As I mentioned in my last post, I’m imposing a hard close on several pending comments, which responded to my last few election-related posts. Those comments won’t appear on the blog. I plan to make a...
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The Price of Pessimism
Over the last year, one of the primary drivers of market action has been the continuing crisis of the European Union. Europe’s agony is structural not cyclical, as the continent struggles to reconcile...
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Naked, But Damn Rich
We like it when facts confirm our opinions. Probably a better way to phrase that is, we like it when our fact-based insights are ultimately recognized as true by a broader universe of more mainstream...
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What is Broken, and What is Not
Last week I was in Palo Alto, California for a two-day conference at Singularity University, a think tank created to address the fast-moving effects of the information-technology revolution on the...
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Happy Days?
It is nice to know that I have not lost my mystical ability to move the markets at will. I’m referring to the fact that I went on vacation last week, and the markets responded with a move toward new...
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What’s Wrong with this Picture? (Stock Market Edition)
Since the market low in March 2009, the U. S. equity market has “climbed a wall of worry,” up more than 120% from the bottom through year-end 2012. Yet until quite recently the bulk of new savings...
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Just the Facts, Ma’am?
A client sent me a link to an interesting article, about what we have learned concerning the intersection of fiscal policy with financial markets. The article’s author, PBS correspondent Paul Solman,...
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Hedge Funds Still…Stink
Another data point in the stream of information confirming that hedge funds are a lousy bet. This latest is a study by Robert Arnott of Research Affiliates, as reported on his firm’s web-site:...
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Musings on Cash
We have a client, a very smart physician, who loves to accuse us of market timing. it is a wounding accusation, given the consistent contempt we’ve offered in our various communications for the idea...
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Reinhart & Rogoff Redux
Some pretty interesting information has come to light on the research performed by Reinhart and Rogoff on the relationship between growth and government debt levels. Briefly, R&R’s 2010...
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That 70s Show
I reached adulthood in the 1970s. It was an era of pessimism, economic malaise and confusion. And don’t get me started about the hideous fashion. The overall zeitgeist of that era was hard to describe...
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Rogue Knights & Turbulent Priests
“Will no one rid me of this turbululent priest?” King Henry II, complaining to his knights about Thomas Becket, Archbisohop of Canterbury I was a high school student back in 1973 when I first read T.S....
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Reverse Barometers
We make our investment decisions based on price, both absolute and relative, rather than on trends and prognostications. So we don’t devote a lot of time to reading the tea leaves, or any other form...
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Pickett at 150
As an historian, I can’t believe we are not talking about what we are not talking about. Tomorrow there will be at least widespread lip service to the significance of what happened in Philadelphia on...
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The Dangers of Narrative
A few years back two of my kids were in the middle school play. Only small, non-speaking parts, but Dad was still expected to show the flag and sit through the performance. Unfortunately, this was...
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Detroit, Greece and West 41st Street
Last week Detroit’s pending bankruptcy was in the news. In the last sixty years, Detroit has gone from being one of the richest cities in the world to one of the poorest in the United States. I read...
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Lies, Damned Lies, and Defined-Benefit Plans
I posted last week, contrasting blogs on Detroit by libertarian Louis Woodhill and Keynesian Paul Krugman. My point was not so much to pick sides as to make an observation about the different...
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