The one thing I can say about 2008 was this it was not boring. I know that there will be a flood of books coming out over the next few months telling us what happened, why it happened and most important of all, who to blame. I don't think that they will tell us much that we don't know already. I have a different book in mind and this is what I want to do. I want to look inward and ask myself what I have learned from these last few weeks that I can incorporate into my "view of the world" looking forward. I The market collapse and investor reaction has been a humbling experience and has revealed...
Sticky dividends!
When we look at how companies have set dividends in most markets, the word that comes to mind is "sticky". Put another way, most companies set absolute dividends and stick with those dividends through good times and bad. A few even have a policy of consistently raising dividends and continue to do so, even in the worst of times. This has been true for decades in the United States, but I was curious about whether the last three months of market turmoil have made significant inroads into changing the policy. The answer seems to be yes, but with caveats...1. S & P keeps track of how many companies...
Hard wired to deceive?
As the Madoff story runs its course and investors express surprise and shock that they were taken to the cleaners, it may be worth noting that research in the social sciences suggests that this may be par for the course, given our genetic make-up. Here is the evidence:1. Brain size and potential for deceit are correlated: Studies of primates have uncovered an interesting finding. The larger the brain of a primate, the more likely it is that it will indulge in deceitful behavior. The great apes, for instance, are masterful deceivers but as the primates with the largest brains (arguably), human...
To zero..and beyond...
Day before yesterday, the Fed announced that is was cutting the Fed Funds rate close to zero. In the weeks preceding, the three-month US treasury bill rate has flirted with negative yields... Both phenomena raise a question: Can nominal interest rates become negative?Let us start off by accepting the fact that real interest rates can become negative and have, for extended periods in the past. Real interest rates can happen when expected inflation is high but central banks decide to flood the market with enough funds to keep nominal interest rates below the expected inflation rate. However, a negative...
To Madoff or not to Madoff?
By now, everyone has heard the story of Bernhard Madoff, the New York city based investment advisor, who was just arrested for perpetrating a fraud estimated in the billions ($55 billions?) As we look at list of prominent people who have been snared in this web of deceit, including Mortimer Zuckerman and Elie Wiesel, we have another opportunity to examine the consequences of greed, hubris and eventual downfall.The facts of the story seem fairly clear. Madoff made his initial reputation as a broker/dealer, and he built a business based upon computerization and quick trades for his customers. Somewhere...
Enterprise value is negative... Is that possible?
There are three measures that can be used to capture the market value in a business. We can measure the market value of equity, i.e., the market capitalization of the equity in the firm. We can add the market value of equity to the market value of debt to get the total market value of the entire firm: think of this as the market value of all of the assets of the firm. We can add the market value of equity to the market value of debt and subtract out cash and marketable securities to get to the enterprise value: this, in effect, is the market value of the operating assets of the firm.We see the...
