General Motors has done $140 billion in revenue over the last 12 months. Its market capitalization is $53 billion. Based off its price-to-sales ratio (0.37), it’s the 9th cheapest stock in the S&P 500. These are facts, but of course there’s a lot more to the story. When GM reported earnings today, management reduced its…

On this weeks Animal Spirits, we discussed: The Pareto Principle Ben’s take on concentration in the stock market The worst 401(k) take ever.  History of the 401(k) Fidelity’s retirement data Liquid alternatives The Vanguard of hedge funds? The value winter Survey of the week Housing regrets 4-day workweek  America is running out of caregivers Can…

Larry Page once built a programmable ink-jet printer out of Legos. Sergey Brin was described as a nerdier Steve Jobs. (Playboy interview) These guys aren’t faking it. Page and Brin met as graduate students at Stanford, where they created an algorithm called PageRank, which would form the basis of Google as we know it today….

I recently spoke with Michael Samuels about my book and investing in general. Michael is the portfolio manager of Broome Street Capital, a fund that specializes in m&a and event-driven trading. I’ve done half a dozen podcasts at this point about the book, and this was easily my favorite discussion. Michael is in the business,…

Articles The key to changing your worldview on time is knowing when to trade it for money. By Nick Maggiulli The inversion would likely be a premature “sell equities” signal By Tim Duy China uses control over electronic communication in vastly draconian cyber dystopia ways compared to the wide range of opinions that are allowed online in…

I tweeted this chart earlier. This chart shows that the five largest S&P 500 stocks have a market capitalization equal to the bottom 282 S&P 500 stocks. This turned out to be something of a Rorschach test, which was not my intention. I just thought it was a powerful visual. I wasn’t really trying to…

On this week’s Animal Spirits, we discuss: Gundlach says we’re getting closer to a recession People are watching the yield curve blip by blip Inflation could actually be okay for bond owners  Survey of the week 7 countries hold half the world’s population In 20 years, half the population will be in 8 states Amazon…

There’s been a ton of talk lately about the flattening yield curve. I don’t really have anything insightful to add to the conversation, but I do want to share some of the best charts I’ve seen on the topic. First, why is the curve inverting, via Tim Duy. Last week the interest rate spread between…

A reader asks: What aptitudes and/or mentality would a given individual need to have for you to hire them with no college education?…From the way it has been spoken about to me from people in the finance industry, it seems as if they view it as nothing more than period of time you just have…

Aaron Brown of AQR gave a presentation in 2013 for the New York Society of Security Analysts. He said some things that are counterintuitive and controversial like “the more you pay for stocks, the safer they are” and “credit spreads are safe when they’re low and risky when they’re high.” It’s understandable to question these statements,…