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Data Update 5 for 2023: The Earnings Test

Musings on Markets

During the course of the year, investors also rediscovered that the essence of business is not growing revenues or adding users, but making profits from that growth. In this post, I will focus on trend lines in profitability at companies in 2022, with the intent of addressing multiple questions.

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In Search of Safe Havens: The Trust Deficit and Risk-free Investments!

Musings on Markets

As the risk-free rate rises, expected returns on equities will be pushed up, and holding all else constant, stock prices will go down., and the reverse will occur, when risk-free rates drop. That is why the risk-free rate becomes an input into option pricing and forward pricing models , and its absence leaves a vacuum.

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Data Update 7 for 2023: Dividends, Buybacks and Cash Flows

Musings on Markets

In the second, Warren Buffet used some heated language to describe those who opposed buybacks, calling them “economic illiterates” and “silver tongued demagogues “. As growth moderates and profitability improves, free cash flows to equity will turn positive, giving these firms the capacity to return cash.

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Data Update 1 for 2021: A (Data) Look Back at a Most Forgettable Year (2020)!

Musings on Markets

That said, it does mean that any broad conclusions (about profitability and revenues) that emerge from my data apply to public companies, and it may be dangerous to extrapolate to private businesses, especially in a year like 2020 where private businesses could have been affected more adversely by COVID shutdowns than public companies.