Musings on Markets

JANUARY 27, 2022

By the end of 2021, it was clear that this bout of inflation was not as transient a phenomenon as some had made it out to be, and the big question leading in 2022, for investors and markets, is how inflation will play out during the year, and beyond, and the consequences for stocks, bonds and currencies.

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Musings on Markets

JANUARY 21, 2023

I will follow up by looking at the mechanics that connect stock prices to inflation, and examine why the damage from higher inflation can vary across companies and sectors. The Year in Review At the start of 2022, the S&P 500 was at 4766.18, up from 3756.07 at the start of that year. Stocks: The What?

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Musings on Markets

NOVEMBER 9, 2021

The automobile business has been in trouble for quite a while, struggling with anemic revenue growth in the aggregate, and abysmal profit margins, with even the very best in the group struggling to earn returns that match, let alone beat, their costs of capital. In sum, the company's market cap has risen from $2.8

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Musings on Markets

MARCH 25, 2021

for the year are at war with its concurrent promise to keep rates low; after all, adding those numbers up yields a intrinsic risk free rate of 8.7%. The Stocks Story As treasury rates have risen in 2021, equity markets have been surprisingly resilient, with stocks up during the first three months.

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Musings on Markets

FEBRUARY 2, 2023

The first of the is as companies scale up, there will be a point where they will hit a growth wall, and their growth will converge on the growth rate for the economy. Firms with large revenues find it difficult to maintain high growth, as they scale up. On both fronts, I am more cautious.

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Musings on Markets

JANUARY 19, 2022

In a post at the start of 2021 , I argued that while stocks entered the year at elevated levels, especially on historic metrics (such as PE ratios), they were priced to deliver reasonable returns, relative to very low risk free rates (with the treasury bond rate at 0.93% at the start of 2021).

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Musings on Markets

JANUARY 8, 2022

To start the year, I returned to a ritual that I have practiced for thirty years, and that is to take a look at not just market changes over the last year, but also to get measures of the financial standing and practices of companies around the world. Happy New Year, and I hope that 2022 brings you good tidings!

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