Emerging Markets have been performing awfully lately. And by lately, I mean the last six years in which little progress has been made. To make matters worse, there was a huge opportunity cost of having capital allocated away from U.S. equities. After six years of sideways movement, Emerging Markets are beginning to really move again,…
Is Momentum Misunderstood?
Howard Marks is a brilliant thinker and one of the most thought provoking investors out there. More importantly, he walks the walk and is the owner of a superb track record. Now that due praise is out of the way, I believe Marks is unfairly critical of technical analysis, specifically on momentum investing. From his…
Does This Time Feel Different?
The Dow Jones Industrial Average is now falling for a seventh straight day. As weakness begets more weakness, you might be thinking to yourself, “this time feels different.” You’d be right, this time does feel different. It always feels different. The reason every potential correction feels different is because we aren’t wired to remember exactly…
Charlie Munger’s Recommended Reading
“In my whole life, I have know no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time- none, zero. You’d be amazed at how much Warren reads- and at how much I read. My children laugh at me. They think I’m a book with a couple of legs sticking out”…
Is Something Weird Going On With Apple?
Nope. There has been a lot of attention given to Apple’s recent slide as the stock swiftly fell 13.5% off its all-time highs. The reality is this sort of price action is something that Apple shareholders have grown very accustomed to over the last few years. In fact, over the last twenty quarters (arbitrary, I…
Waiting For Normal
“This oscillation is one of the most dependable features of the investment world, and investor psychology seems to spend much more time at the extremes than it does at a happy medium” – Howard Marks These are not normal times investors are living in. The Fed has held short-term interest rates at zero for six…
When Reason Failed
People whose job is to report on the news in real time are forced to provide answers to their audience. Because price generally changes prior to the news, reasons provided often miss the mark, to be polite. Here’s a great example of that from When Genius Failed “Secretary Rubin, back from salmon fishing in Alaska, tried…
Breadth and Major Market Tops
Conventional wisdom goes that prior to market tops, the major averages become more reliant on just a handful of stocks to lead the rally. When stocks are making new highs, it’s important to look at breadth indicators because indices can pull a nasty trick of masking what is actually happening to the majority of stocks….
How Should We Think About Past Performance?
Show people the following chart and one hundred percent will choose to invest in the blue line. The blue line represents the Russell 2000 Value Index and the red line is the Russell 2000 Growth Index. The problem with long term charts like these, especially for the laymen, is that this greatly oversimplifies things. The…
The Challenge of Long-Term Investing
Barry’s Masters in Business series keeps getting better and better. A few weeks back he spoke with Leon Cooperman, and more recently he interviewed the brilliant Howard Marks. When a Marks memo hits Warren Buffett’s inbox, he reads it immediately. That’s the sort of thinker the founder of Oaktree Capital is. Howard Marks has been…
