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.

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Musings on Markets

FEBRUARY 15, 2023

Starting with gross margins, and computing the number for all non-financial service firms, we report the distribution of gross margins across publicly traded companies at the start of 2023, again based upon gross income and sales in the most recent twelve months: While the median gross margin across all publicly traded global firms is about 30%.,

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Musings on Markets

FEBRUARY 8, 2022

In the first few weeks of 2022, we have had repeated reminders from the market that risk never goes away for good, even in the most buoyant markets, and that when it returns, investors still seem to be surprised that it is there.

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Musings on Markets

JANUARY 12, 2021

Last week, was my data week, where I download and analyze data on all publicly traded companies, listed anywhere in the world, and I will post extensively on what the numbers look like after a most tumultuous year. As we approach the turn of the calendar year, I have my own set of rituals that prepare me for the new year.

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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.

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Musings on Markets

JANUARY 27, 2021

As stock and bond markets went through these gyrations, it should come as no surprise that the same forces were playing out in other markets as well. Commodities With that lengthly lead in, let's look at what 2020 brought as surprises to the commodity market. against developed market currencies.

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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.

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Musings on Markets

AUGUST 15, 2023

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. In a reflection of the times, there have been two developments.

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Musings on Markets

JANUARY 5, 2024

The numbers that I computed opened my eyes to how much perspective on the high, low, and typical values, i.e., the distribution of margins, helped in valuing the company, and how little information there was available, at least at that time, on this dimension.

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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.

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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.

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Musings on Markets

JANUARY 6, 2023

Mean reversion : I am not a knee-jerk believer in mean reversion, but the tendency for numbers to move back towards averages is a strong one. 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.

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Valuation Corporate Finance Financial Analysis Leverage 52

Barry Ritholtz

MAY 9, 2023

He co-chairs a number of the asset management investment committees. So I interviewed with a bunch of banks, got a number of job offers by the end of the week, and joined Goldman Sachs in October 1998. I ended up being hired onto the high yield desk as a research analyst and did that for a number of years, a couple of years.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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? And 00:06:38 [Speaker Changed] Door number one was much better than door number three in, in the circumstances. That’s right.

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