Readers probably know that money market funds seek to maintain a net asset value of $1 a share. The choice of words is precise. There is no guarantee to maintain the $1 value, but industry participants consider it to be so important to the reputation of money market funds that parent companies have upon occasion […]
Read more...When you think you’ve read everything worth considering on a given topic, once in a while something comes along to prove you wrong. A case in point is this post by Charles Calomiris at VoxEu on the subprime mess. It is longer than the standard VoxEU offering, but well worth your attention. Calomiris not only […]
Read more...According to reports in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, Lehman is shopping its asset management business, which includes Neuberger Berman (purchased for $2.6 billion in 2003), its private client brokers, and Lehman Brothers Asset Management. Now look at the valuation of the asset management business versus Lehman as a whole. From the […]
Read more...A classic from Tim Knight (click to enlarge):
Read more...The bloom has already started to come of the rose, but even so, at least one firm’s analyst saw fit to say something. Merrill Lynch has warned against the “sell energy, buy financials” trade, as reported in the Times of London: Merrill said yesterday that the unwinding of the classic bet of the credit crunch […]
Read more...There may be a disconnect between what the brokerage industry is reporting on a temporary rule to ban naked shorts in 19 financial firms, whose common characteristic seems to be that they are deemed “too big to fail,” and what some customers are experiencing. The industry reports that everything is hunky dory now that the […]
Read more...Um, hasn’t anyone heard of the saying, “The customer is always right”? Apparently not, at least if you are a fund manager. The Wall Street Journal in “Credit Woes Lead Investors to Simplicity,” reports on a KPMG/Economist Intelligence Unit survey of investors carried out in March and April. Having gone to read the report itself, […]
Read more...My favorite section of the indictment against Ralph Cioffi and Miatthew Tannin (which is good reading): As described to investors by the defendants and others, the High Grade Fund’s objective was to provide a modest, safe and steady source of returns to its investors. CIOFFI, TANNIN and others told investors that they could expect annual […]
Read more...The New York Times describes how some big-money players are skipping the commodities market and going directly to being hard asset players by buying farmland and grain elevators. This is hardly new (I know of one global macro fund that was making ag related investments two years ago) but the Times piece gives the impression […]
Read more...I am overdue on a write-up of a great panel discussion hosted by the folks at RGE Monitor (Nouriel Roubini’s blog/news service). It was all fundamentally oriented, so with the coming holiday weekend and lack of new news, you will not be any worse off for my delay (although I am annoyed that I haven’t […]
Read more...I must admit that I have never fallen in love with an investment. Yet per the summary of an article in International Journal of Psychoanalysis (hat tip 2ubh, investors are prone to “emotional inflation” similar to what people experience in romantic relationships. But the piece leaves key questions unanswered: do depressives or paranoid schizoids make […]
Read more...The Financial Times reports that mutual funds got off to a very bad start this year, with 24 of the 25 biggest managers seeing a decline in funds. Note first that the article is not discussing individual funds (e.g. Magellean) but fund families (e.g. Fidelity). Note second that the fall isn’t simply the result of […]
Read more...Reader Benjamin sent me this query, and I thought I’d be so bold as to hazard an answer, and anticipate that others will have valuable perspective to contribute: I read NC on a regular basis, and would like to see some macro advice for your younger readers, like myself. If I’m parsing commentary correctly, I […]
Read more...Even great investors have bad days and bad calls. John Authers has a clever piece in the Financial Times on the errors Buffett and Soros have made. According to a soon-to-be-released book by Vahan Jahigian, Buffett is astute about his picks, natch, but not so hot at selling. He argues that the Sage of Omaha […]
Read more...A very long time ago (roughly 1985), a colleague handed me a short Brooking paper by Robert Vishny, Josef Lakonishok, and Andrei Shleifer. By then it was a couple of years old. I’ve not been able to find it online, but my recollection of it is pretty good. It was the first time these well-respected […]
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