Monthly Archives: May 2015

WSJ Misinterprets Its Own Data to Demonstrate Companies Are Spending Too Little on Capex, too much on Dividends & Buy-backs

To its credit, the WSJ did some serious quantitative work in an effort to determine whether Blackrock’s Larry Fink is correct that companies are paying out too much money to shareholders while starving capital investment. Fink is right, the Journal … Continue reading

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“The Policy Environment”—Bloomberg’s No-go Zone

A few days ago on Bloomberg Radio Tom Keene and Barry Ritholtz interviewed Stephen Stanley of Amherst Pierpont Securities, focusing on his gloomy outlook for GDP growth. Twice Stanley stated that the “policy environment” was holding back growth. First he … Continue reading

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Fidelity versus the S&P 500: Round Two

A couple of days ago the WSJ reported big news in the mutual fund world—active managers have outperformed index funds thus far in 2015. Which prompted me to update a little study I did three years ago that compared the … Continue reading

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Blinder’s Blinders

In a recent WSJ article, Princeton professor Alan Blinder, formerly vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, ruminates on the decline in productivity growth in the past couple of years. He methodically runs through various possible explanations for the slowdown. Is … Continue reading

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Victorian London and Baltimore’s Post-Capitalist Proletariat

Meet John Walker, alias “Black Jack,” a licensed hawker in Victorian London. He makes a living distributing coal to Londoners in winter and selling sand to stables in summer. Like larger entrepreneurs, he plays the spread between wholesale and retail. … Continue reading

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The Wisdom of Michael Steinhardt

Last weekend we, along with a few hundred other garden enthusiasts, visited the famous gardens of hedge fund impresario Michael Steinhardt, located in the NYC suburbs. My wife and I realized this was not your typical mega-estate when an attendant … Continue reading

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