Late last week I was talking to a client who mentioned it had been a while since we last sent out an Insight. I explained, as I often do, that we only write when we feel there is actually something worth writing. Of course the very next morning we come in the office and Japan’s…
For years I have been giving the same talk about the standard measures of risk used in the modern financial world: standard deviation and beta. Standard deviation is a measure of absolute volatility, while beta is a measure of relative volatility. Standard deviation measures the average, or “standard,” difference, or “deviation” (we financial types are…
It is always hard to tell what will actually trigger a correction. This week it seems like Cyprus is the culprit. The story out of Cyprus is almost surreal; the thought that the government could just come in and take ten percent or more of your savings is bizarre to our ears. In an almost…
2013 has gotten off to a wonderful start for equity investors. After what must be one of the luckiest years on record in 2012, the S&P 500 continued the ride up more than 7 percent year to-date, and then the Fed had to go and ruin the party. The minutes of the last meeting of…
The fourth quarter 2012 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) number came in earlier this week and it was surprisingly negative, -0.1 percent to be exact. Jim Cramer, the colorful CNBC personality, immediately called it a “one-off.” In other words it is just a statistical anomaly to be ignored, and the market has pretty much acted accordingly….
