Wherever You Go, There You Are

Wherever You Go, There You Are The market is expert at making prognosticators look foolish. Great Depression-era economist John Maynard Keynes, the primary architect of modern economics, once said “Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent”. It essentially means that the market has a mind of its own. It is more than […]
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Liquidity

Liquidity Liquidity is one of the most confusing words in finance. The fact that it has multiple meanings, depending on the topic at hand, certainly doesn’t help matters. While we prefer to avoid that word, this is one of those times when it is unavoidable. In this case, liquidity is the amount of money sloshing […]
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It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World Our title this week is also the title of a 1963 comedy. The movie is about a group of motorists that witness a deadly accident. The drivers’ final words are the location of a hidden stash of money. The situation quickly devolves into a wild and hilarious free […]
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It’s the Punch You Don’t See Coming that Knocks You Out

It’s the Punch You Don’t See Coming That Knocks You Out The banking crisis has been in the news for better than a month now, but we suspect that the real crisis is ahead of us, not behind us. The ‘disappearing deposits’ problem, that brought down SVB, Signature, and most recently First Republic, could be […]
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Implications of a Fracturing Global Economy

Implications of a Fracturing Global Economy Our comments each week typically revolve around shorter term issues but this week we want to spend some time thinking longer term, much longer term. The catalyst for this shift was a speech given this week by Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank (ECB), which discusses the […]
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Expert Failure

Expert Failure Quite a few years ago, I had the privilege to hear Malcom Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and Blink, speak about the ramifications of expert failure. His point was simple: If an idiot makes a mistake, it doesn’t matter very much because logically, no one is listening to the idiot. However, if […]
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Deal, or No Deal?

Deal, or No Deal? The banking deposit crisis is receding, but the credit crunch is just starting. After 15 years of investment decisions dominated by the Fed Put (i.e., extremely low interest rates and pumping money into the economy, to rescue markets), the critical question investors currently have is whether the Fed will resume a […]
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