CFO News Room

JANUARY 7, 2023

Counter made-up numbers : It remains true that people (analysts, market experts, politicians) often make assertions based upon either incomplete or flawed data, or no data at all. Data universe : In my sample, I include all publicly traded firms with market capitalizations that exceed zero, traded anywhere in the world.

Marketing 130

Marketing Valuation Corporate Finance Financial Analysis 130

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 82

Hurdle Rate Profit and Loss Accounting Investments 82

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. The numbers yield interesting insights.

Hurdle Rate 99

Hurdle Rate Investments Accounting Entertainment 99

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 5, 2024

Thus, looking at only the companies in the S&P 500 may give you more reliable data, with fewer missing observations, but your results will reflect what large market cap companies in any sector or industry do, rather than what is typical for that industry.

Valuation 106

Valuation Financial Analysis Analyzing Data Numbers 106

Musings on Markets

AUGUST 19, 2024

Setting the Stage The notion of a business life cycle is neither new nor original, since versions of it have floated around in management circles for decades, but its applications in finance have been spotty, with some attempts to tie where a company is in the life cycle to its corporate governance and others to accounting ratios.

Corporate Finance 123

Corporate Finance Valuation Investments Finance 123

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 52

Profit and Loss Investments Hurdle Rate Accounting 52

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 6, 2023

Counter made-up numbers : It remains true that people (analysts, market experts, politicians) often make assertions based upon either incomplete or flawed data, or no data at all. Data universe : In my sample, I include all publicly traded firms with market capitalizations that exceed zero, traded anywhere in the world.

Valuation 52

Valuation Corporate Finance Financial Analysis Leverage 52

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 12, 2021

I take the point of view that uncertainty should not stop you from valuing companies, that your value estimates will have more error in them, but since the market also faces the same uncertainty, your best bargains may be in the midst of uncertainty. That tells me three things.

Valuation 52

Valuation Corporate Finance Finance Investments 52

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 9, 2021

I spent the first week of 2021 in the same way that I have spent the first week of every year since 1995, collecting data on publicly traded companies and analyzing how they navigated the cross currents of the prior year, both in operating and market value terms.

Valuation 52

Valuation Currencies Numbers Corporate Finance 52

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 20, 2021

Investors are constantly in search of a single metric that will tell them whether a market is under or over valued, and consequently whether they should buying or selling holdings in that market. Risk premiums can and will change over time : Risk premiums are driven by risk aversion, and risk aversion itself can change over time.

Treasury 52

Treasury Investments Marketing Valuation 52

Barry Ritholtz

FEBRUARY 21, 2023

And I love business, I love the markets, I want to go there. What sort of challenges — BUCKLEY: A couple of bear markets. BUCKLEY: We’ve had, let’s see, inflation at a 40-year high, tightest labor market of our lifetimes. We were losing market share in the critical retirement, the 401(k) business.

Leadership 109

Leadership Investments Profit and Loss Technology 109

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 28, 2024

In my last data updates for this year, I looked first at how equity markets rebounded in 2023 , driven by a stronger-than-expected economy and inflation coming down, and then at how interest rates mirrored this rebound.

Hurdle Rate 123

Hurdle Rate Concentration Investments Finance 123

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 102

Hurdle Rate Corporate Finance Investments Finance 102

Musings on Markets

JULY 25, 2023

The other is pragmatic , since it is almost impossible to value a company or business, without a clear sense of how risk exposure varies across the world, since for many companies, either the inputs to or their production processes are in foreign markets or the output is outside domestic markets.

Currencies 52

Currencies Hurdle Rate Valuation Marketing 52

CFO News Room

NOVEMBER 8, 2022

directly via email: Resources Featured In This Episode: Looking for sample client service calendars, marketing plans, and more? And we’re going to talk about what’s going on in the markets, briefly talk about the portfolio. ” look at the Monte Carlo simulations, look at what is the hurdle rate.

Restructuring 130

Restructuring Planning Marketing Accounting 130

Barry Ritholtz

MAY 9, 2023

And my dad had always said, as many young kids get this advice, doctor, lawyer, accountant, engineer. SALISBURY: And accountant seemed like a reasonable option. And I kind of stumbled my way into accounting. That background of being an accountant was just great bedrock training. RITHOLTZ: Sure. Very different fields.

Investments 117

Investments Banking Numbers Marketing 117

Musings on Markets

FEBRUARY 27, 2023

Note that this framework applies for all businesses, from the smallest, privately owned businesses, where debt takes the form of bank loans and even credit card borrowing and equity is owner savings, the largest publicly traded companies, where debt can be in the form of corporate bonds and equity is shares held by public market investors.

Corporate Finance 52

Corporate Finance Finance Marketing Banking 52

Barry Ritholtz

NOVEMBER 8, 2022

CHANCELLOR: And look — yeah, but then if you look at the valuation of the market at that time, the market was — the U.S. CHANCELLOR: And look — yeah, but then if you look at the valuation of the market at that time, the market was — the U.S. RITHOLTZ: That’s how you know it’s going to be low?

Valuation 57

Valuation Finance Investments Banking 57

Barry Ritholtz

MAY 21, 2024

It’s because, you know, when everybody’s looking at all this data and it all seems terrible, chances are that information’s priced into the market. I 00:13:35 [Speaker Changed] Met him at a, a, a Market Technician’s Association. About equity markets. Oh, nice event. 00:13:46 [Speaker Changed] Yes.

Finance 57

Finance Marketing Numbers Investments 57

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 62

Marketing Finance Leadership Investments 62

Barry Ritholtz

NOVEMBER 25, 2024

He, he does some really, really interesting research and gets deep into the weeds on things like market structure, liquidity cascades, what really drives returns, how much should you be focused on alpha versus beta. And I, and I really like the application of math and statistics and computer science to markets. It’s just a model.

Leverage 57

Leverage Investments Marketing Math 57