A year ago at this time we wrote a blog post entitled "Taking stock of 2008." It is worth revisiting because the issues we discussed then are still swirling around as pundits from all directions take stock of 2009.We believe that the events of 2009 have borne out the interpretation we offered back in 2008. Back then we said that the "spectacular implosion...
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Issues raised by the indictment of Raj Rajaratnam
Today the Wall Street Journal ran an article entitled "The Man Who Wired Silicon Valley" full of colorful details from the career of former tech analyst and hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam, who has been accused and indicted by the SEC for profiting in the markets from insider information.The Journal article's accompanying interactive graphic calls...
Monday, December 28, 2009
Some lessons from 2009
Over the weekend, the New York Times published an article which brings up a few important points we've made at length and which are worth revisiting as investors consider the lessons of 2009.The Times article notes that many investors underperform available investment vehicles. We have discussed this phenomenon previously, linking it to the situation...
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
We get by in spite
Over a year ago, we published one of our quarterly commentaries on the investment climate (dated October, 2008) in which we began with one of Richard C. Taylor's favorite phrases: "We get by in spite."In that commentary, we explained that to Dick Taylor, "We get by in spite" was a kind of short-hand expression which meant that "in spite of the lunacy...
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Unstoppable Wave: Revisited
Mary Meeker and the rest of her tech research team at Morgan Stanley* recently released a trio of research documents entitled the Mobile Internet Report.They can be downloaded at the Morgan Stanley link above, and also read online in their entirety at ReadWriteWeb.Meeker and her team are one of the first major Wall Street firms to delve into the enormous...
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
The 97-pound weakling
Who isn't familiar with the iconic and long-running ad campaigns for the bodybuilding techniques of Charles Atlas, featuring the "97-pound weakling" being bullied on the beach?Becoming "fed up" with having sand kicked in his face, the former bag of bones bulks up and returns to the beach to put down the bully, restore order to the beach, and earn...
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
What Rube Goldberg could teach us about economics
Rube Goldberg was a San Francisco-born American cartoonist and the genius behind a long-standing series of cartoons illustrating impractical humorous and endlessly-enjoyable contraptions. His name, in fact, became synonymous with "a comically involved, complicated invention, laboriously contrived to perform a simple operation." Some of his inventions...
Thursday, December 03, 2009
The best defense is a good offense!
Recently, independent investment research firm BCA Research published a weekly bulletin (available by subscription only) with the subject of "Wealth Preservation."In it, author Chen Zhao noted that he has found from his conversations with ultra-wealthy investors and their advisors that they are often "natural bears.""As one gentleman put it," the...
