CFO News Room

JANUARY 18, 2023

The question of whether a company is making or losing money should be a simple one to answer, especially in an age where accounting statements are governed by a myriad of rules, and a legion of number-crunchers follow these rules to report profits generated by a firm. Returns on Invested Capital (or Equity).

Marketing

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.

Hurdle Rate

Musings on Markets

FEBRUARY 27, 2022

Measuring Profitability The question of whether a company is making or losing money should be a simple one to answer, especially in an age where accounting statements are governed by a myriad of rules, and a legion of number-crunchers follow these rules to report profits generated by a firm.

Hurdle Rate

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 5, 2024

In pursuit of an answer to that question, I used company-specific data from Value Line, one of the earliest entrants into the investment data business, to compute an industry average. Return on (invested) capital 2. Ratings & Spreads 2. Tax rates 4. Excess Returns on investments 4. Beta & Risk 1.

Valuation

CFO News Room

JANUARY 7, 2023

That said, to use mean reversion in analysis or investing, you need to know what these averages are, either over time or across companies, and data can help in that pursuit. . Check rules of thumb : Investing and corporate finance are full of rules of thumb, many of long standing.

Marketing

Musings on Markets

FEBRUARY 15, 2023

Accounting Returns While profit margins tell a part of the profitability story, a high margin, by itself, may be insufficient to make a judgment on whether a business is a good one, i.e,, a business that consistently generates returns that exceed the cost of funding it.

Profit and Loss

Barry Ritholtz

FEBRUARY 21, 2023

We have lowered the cost of investing, and we have improved the quality of those funds. It forced us to make some tough choices in that time in some big investments, whether we were building out our advice capabilities and building virtual teams to do it, or you know, tough choices in our retirement business. BUCKLEY: $125 billion.

Leadership

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 12, 2021

Thus, you and I can disagree about whether beta is a good measure of risk, but not on the principle that no matter what definition of risk you ultimately choose, riskier investments need higher hurdles than safer investments. That tells me three things.

Valuation

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 6, 2023

That said, to use mean reversion in analysis or investing, you need to know what these averages are, either over time or across companies, and data can help in that pursuit. Check rules of thumb : Investing and corporate finance are full of rules of thumb, many of long standing. Return on Invested Capital 2. Return on Equity 1.

Valuation

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 9, 2021

Put simply, I possess no exclusivity here, and staying consistent with my thesis, I don't expect to expect to make money by investing based upon this data. So, why bother? You would like those answers now, but stay tuned to the rest of my data updates and the data will speak for itself.)

Valuation

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 20, 2021

The failures of the signal have been variously attributed to low interest rates, accounting mis-measurement of earnings (especially at tech companies), and by some, to animal spirits. Intuitively, if you want to earn a higher risk premium on an investment, holding cash flows fixed, you will pay less for that investment today.

Treasury

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 28, 2024

In this post, I look at risk, a central theme in finance and investing, but one that is surprisingly misunderstood and misconstrued. Risk Measures There is almost no conversation or discussion that you can have about business or investing, where risk is not a part of that discussion. What is risk?

Hurdle Rate

Musings on Markets

MARCH 8, 2023

The dividend principle, which is the focus of this post is built on a very simple principle, which is that if a company is unable to find investments that make returns that meet its hurdle rate thresholds, it should return cash back to the owners in that business.

Hurdle Rate

Barry Ritholtz

MAY 9, 2023

He is the Chief Investment Officer of Asset and Wealth Management at Goldman Sachs. He co-chairs a number of the asset management investment committees. I thought this was an absolutely fascinating way to see the world of investment management. Investment banks were not really a known concept in the area where I grew up.

Investments

Musings on Markets

JULY 25, 2023

To the extent that divide is not just descriptive, but also drives real world investment, both companies and investors may be misallocating their capital, and I will argue for finer delineations of risk. in my July 2023 update) and apply this scalar to the default spread, to arrive at a country risk premium.

Currencies

CFO News Room

NOVEMBER 8, 2022

” look at the Monte Carlo simulations, look at what is the hurdle rate. But we want it on the calendar so that we keep clients and ourselves accountable so that we make sure that those meetings actually do happen. But really the main driver in that first meeting is, “Hey, we’ve got to update the financial plan.

Restructuring

Musings on Markets

FEBRUARY 27, 2023

Debt's place in business To understand debt's role in a business, I will start with a big picture perspective, where you break a business down into assets-in-place, i.e., the value of investments it has already made and growth assets, the value of investments you expect it to make in the future. Do companies optimize financing mix?

Corporate Finance

Barry Ritholtz

NOVEMBER 8, 2022

His latest book could not be more timely, “The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest,” it’s all about the history of interest rates, money lending, investing speculation, funded by banks and loans and credit. You can imagine, you give a bearish message at a bullish investment conference, and no one listens to you.

Valuation

Barry Ritholtz

MAY 21, 2024

She is one of the few people who combine quantitative investing with behavioral finance. No, I think that that’s the part of it that I find the most interesting is the idea that, you know, a stock price doesn’t really have a, you know, the fair value of an an investment instrument is somewhat arbitrary. Right, right.

Finance

Barry Ritholtz

DECEMBER 26, 2023

You work at Capital Growth Financial and in former global markets before you join investing Giant Merrill Lynch in 2007, what was that transition like from smaller shops to a really, really big one? Accounting was very difficult. It’s about a 50% fail rate, something like that. That’s right. Maybe even more.

Marketing

Barry Ritholtz

NOVEMBER 25, 2024

I, if you are at all interested in concepts of things like portable alpha or return stacking, or just want to know how a quant looks at the world of investing and tries to decide where there are opportunities. Quantitative investing was, was that the plan from the beginning? Let’s talk a little bit about your background.

Leverage