Musings on Markets

AUGUST 15, 2023

After the rating downgrade, my mailbox was inundated with questions of what this action meant for investing, in general, and for corporate finance and valuation practice, in particular, and this post is my attempt to answer them all with one post. What is a risk free investment? Why does the risk-free rate matter?

Risk-free Rate 98

Risk-free Rate Risk Premium Treasury Start-ups 98

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 6, 2023

Check rules of thumb : Investing and corporate finance are full of rules of thumb, many of long standing. When valuing or analyzing a company, I find myself looking for and using macro data (risk premiums, default spreads, tax rates) and industry-level data on profitability, risk and leverage. Debt breakdown 2.

Risk Premium 52

Risk Premium Dividends Start-ups EBITDA 52

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 9, 2021

The first is that I do not have a macro focus, and my interests in macro variables occur only in the context of corporate finance or valuation issues. In the same dataset where I compute historical equity risk premiums, I report historical returns on corporate bonds in two ratings classes (Moody’s Aaa and Baa ratings).

Risk Premium 52

Risk Premium Market Capitalization Equity Start-ups 52

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 31, 2024

In my last three posts, I looked at the macro (equity risk premiums, default spreads, risk free rates) and micro (company risk measures) that feed into the expected returns we demand on investments, and argued that these expected returns become hurdle rates for businesses, in the form of costs of equity and capital.

Equity 80

Equity Book Value Start-ups Corporate Finance 80

Musings on Markets

FEBRUARY 27, 2023

An Optimizing Tool In my second and third data posts for this year, I chronicled the effects of rising interest rates and risk premiums on costs of equity and capital. In computing the latter, I used the current debt ratios for firms, but made no attempt to evaluate whether these mixes were "right" or not.

Equity 52

Equity EBITDA Start-ups Net Debt 52

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 8, 2022

A few of these variables are macro variables, but only those that I find useful in corporate finance and valuation, and not easily accessible in public data bases. Rather than replicate that data, my macroeconomic datasets relate to four key variables that I use in corporate finance and valuation.

Risk Premium 99

Risk Premium Start-ups Market Capitalization Corporate Finance 99

Musings on Markets

MAY 11, 2021

With stocks, I compute this pre-personal tax return at the start of every month, using the current level of index and expected cash flows to back out an internal rate of return; this is the basis for the implied equity risk premium. It is one more reason that blindly using historical risk premiums can lead to static and strange values.

Dividends 52

Dividends Start-ups Risk Premium Treasury 52

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 28, 2024

In particular, there are wide variations in how risk is measured, and once measured, across companies and countries, and those variations can lead to differences in expected returns and hurdle rates, central to both corporate finance and investing judgments.

Risk Premium 117

Risk Premium Beta Start-ups Equity 117

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 5, 2024

In my corporate finance class, I describe all decisions that companies make as falling into one of three buckets – investing decisions, financing decision and dividend decisions. Equity Risk Premiums 2. Financing Flows 5. Dividends and Potential Dividends (FCFE) 1. Buybacks 2. Return on (invested) capital 2.

Dividends 105

Dividends Risk Premium Equity Book Value 105

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 10, 2025

In corporate finance and investing, which are areas that I work in, I find myself doing double takes as I listen to politicians, market experts and economists making statements about company and market behavior that are fairy tales, and data is often my weapon for discerning the truth. Beta & Risk 1. Equity Risk Premiums 2.

Risk Premium 115

Risk Premium Dividends Start-ups Corporate Finance 115

Musings on Markets

FEBRUARY 8, 2025

In the first five posts, I have looked at the macro numbers that drive global markets, from interest rates to risk premiums, but it is not my preferred habitat. A few years ago, I wrote a paper for practitioners on the cost of capital , where I described the cost of capital as the Swiss Army knife of finance, because of its many uses.

Risk Premium 72

Risk Premium Beta Start-ups Equity 72

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 31, 2025

The value per share that I estimate for Nvidia dropped from $87 in September 2024 to $78 in January 2025, much of that change driven by the smaller AI chip market that comes out of the DeepSeek disruption (with the rest of the decline arising for higher riskfree rates and the equity risk premiums).

Start-ups 131

Start-ups Marketability Technology Risk Premium 131

Reynolds Holding

MARCH 25, 2025

17] See [link] (showing the United States has among the lowest equity risk premiums in the world); Luzi Hail and Christian Leuz, International Differences in the Cost of Equity Capital: Do Legal Institutions and Securities Regulation Matter?, Division of Corporation Finance, No Action Letter: Latham and Watkins (Mar.

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Musings on Markets

JULY 24, 2024

After the 2008 market crisis, I resolved that I would be far more organized in my assessments and updating of equity risk premiums, in the United States and abroad, as I looked at the damage that can be inflicted on intrinsic value by significant shifts in risk premiums, i.e., my definition of a crisis.

Risk Premium 75

Risk Premium Equity Start-ups EBITDA 75