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LewisBraham
Hi Hank,
Your satire came across very well. Don't worry about the user name.
Best,
Lewis
@Sma3 An anecdote about Southwest, Connecticut does not a national trend make:
https://bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-9/forty-years-of-falling-manufacturing-employment.htm This long-term loss of manufacturing jobs is only going to get worse with time due t…
There is also of course the PPP business loan forgiveness hypocrisy from the 2020 bailouts:
https://statesman.com/story/news/politics/politifact/2022/09/06/fact-check-ppp-loans-forgiven-republicans-matt-gaetz-marjorie-taylor-greene/65470173007/ It'…
While I have my own issues with student loan forgiveness, I can understand the perspective of Millennials and Gen Zs who think it’s hypocritical that many in the older generation were perfectly fine with two massive government taxpayer funded bailo…
https://marketwatch.com/story/the-economy-and-the-stock-market-tends-to-do-better-under-democrats-11611158787
https://kiplinger.com/investing/602714/best-and-worst-presidents-according-to-the-stock-market
By the way, if he knows it, it must just k…
I would wager a sizable sum that Baseball_Fan has never read the 1619 Project and is merely parroting what he hears from the usual sources. Nor does he know what Marxism is. I suspect any sort of taxation to him for purposes other than the protectio…
A good analysis of the subject and why the probability of a serious default is slim: https://morningstar.com/articles/1133400/should-investors-be-worried-about-the-debt-ceiling
For those who think their FDIC-insured bank accounts/CDs would be safe in the event of a Treasury bond default: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USGSEC
Things would be OK perhaps in the short-term if it's just a missed Treasury payment--a technica…
@larryB To me, the Boglehead policy of not alowing any connection to be made between investing/money and politics is the equivalent of don't-ask-don't-tell in the military or don't-say-gay in Florida. There are definitely politics in the investment …
I don't think it will get that bad, but if it did get that bad, that would be the place to hide. I think the irrationalism we are observing in Congress with one party is always like the human equivalent of "other people's money" in the financial wor…
Just sad, and even sadder because it's so predictable now, and nothing meaningful will be done. All we'll hear is the usual "thoughts and prayers" platitudes.
BSVSX is interesting and worth watching, but this level of concentration in small-cap stocks and the shift from a non-concentrated style at T. Rowe to a concentrated one now makes me nervous, Morningstar's analysis notwithstanding:
At T. Rowe Price…
Since October 20 of 2022 when Pfizer made its announcement it would raise vaccine prices and the market reacted by expecting Moderna would too, Moderna's stock is up 64% while Pfizer's is up only 5%. This makes sense as Moderna is a much more pure-p…
This analysis of pricing is very interesting: https://kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/how-much-could-covid-19-vaccines-cost-the-u-s-after-commercialization/
Pfizer already announced a few months ago it was doing the same: https://reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/pfizer-expects-price-covid-vaccine-110-130-per-dose-2022-10-20/
Moderna’s stock actually rallied earlier after the Pfizer annou…
Interesting development to this story here: https://propublica.org/article/pressure-mounts-for-hospice-reform?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailynewsletter&utm_content=river&utm_term=The%20Daily%20Digest
@Sma3 @shipwreckedandalone It wasn't just Karl Marx who worried about capitalism being rigged by monopolists and oligarchs. This is a quote from Adam Smith:
“A monopoly granted either to an individual or to a trading company, has the same effect as …
I don’t see chimps or lizards trading credit default swaps. The idea that capitalism or communism or any “ism” is natural and therefore unalterable or unimprovable like air or gravity is a toxic one. They are human inventions that were made during …
Hard to say in the House, but there never was a “simple majority” for Dems in the Senate with Manchin and Sinema. It was more appropriately termed a very complex difficult majority.
@davidrmoran I don't quite get the debt-to-GDP fixation. To me, as a country matures as first a developing, then a developed nation, it makes sense that GDP slows and more of its citizens financial wherewithal is in assets like stocks, bonds and rea…
In emerging markets--really any market--there are all sorts of country risks. If a fund doesn't invest in China or is light China, it will likely overweight India instead. With India, one of the big risks is an escalation with Pakistan, which has be…
The wheel and democracy were/are inventions, as is capitalism. Humans are still greedy and fearful, but far more organized and less violent than we have been in the past. Debt would be less or non-existent if this were taxed appropriately:
@shipwreckedandalone I wonder if the T-Rexes and other dinosaurs, when they spied the Chicxulub asteroid descending towards them during the Cretaceous period, thought, "There is nothing new under the sun." Or if the Neandertals thought that when the…
Credit default swaps could work in the short-term if a T-bill skips a payment, but would likely be disastrous in the event of a full on default as all of the counterparties to the swaps, which invest heavily in Treasuries themselves, would probably …
Thanks. Very interesting info. Based on that, I actually wouldn’t recommend DODEX as there are cheaper quantitative emerging market ETFs run by more experienced managers at DFA and Avantis. DFAE is one, AVES is another as well as AVEM and DFEV. I wo…
Worth a read if you can access the story: https://nytimes.com/2023/01/15/opinion/ai-chatgpt-lobbying-democracy.html
ChatGPT could automatically compose comments submitted in regulatory processes. It could write letters to the editor for publication …
I actually think they’re well-run funds, but, as I said, you need to understand them before buying them. They are more for playing offense than defense. But almost all small cap funds are. Great if you’re feeling bullish. Bearish—not so much.
I suspect many growth managers do have fair value estimates, but those estimates have to change with interest rates. A stock with a 4% earnings yield today, i.e., a 25 p-e but great growth prospects in the distant future, looks a lot more attractive…
@Derf Only deities and the "universe" provide signs. We're just humble humans not sure where the markets are heading with any certainty. But perhaps the universe is trying to tell us something.
There are only a handful of small-cap funds less volatile than the S&P 500, and I don't know if there are any with a growth-stock orientation like these funds. One on the value side is RYSEX. Actually, NBGNX is one on the growth side. But that h…
In addition, we believed, as we always have, that volatility is not a good measure of risk over the long term within the small cap equity market, regardless of which direction prices are trending. Volatility tends to distract investors and entice t…
I think a serious debate needs to occur with regulators as to whether crypto is or is not really an asset class that should be legal to invest in. They've been dodging this question for too long and because of that the financial services industry ha…
One interesting ESG fund is ECAT. It’s interesting not because the manager, BlackRock, has the best ESG standards for this fund. It doesn’t. It’s interesting because it’s a closed-end fund which under most circumstances doesn’t issue new shares of t…
