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The Best of the Aleph Blog, Part 26
Photo Credit: richard winchell || No, don’t study the Kabbalah…
To my readers, for a little while, I am going to be doing some “best of” posts along with some smaller articles. You should see eleven “best of” articles before this is done. If this bugs you, just turn me off for a little while. These articles are important, because there are some re-publishers that mine these pieces for content, and sometimes translate highlighted articles into languages other than English.
This era probably had the greatest density of “Rules” posts. In my view, these were my best posts written between May and July 2013:
How do you protect those whom you love and yourself from economic obsolescence?
In Defense of Concentrated Portfolios
Why it is good to have asset managers that are not closet indexers, unlike most actively managed money in the market today.
Many Will Not Retire; What About You?
Thinking about the different streams of income in society, and which might be more likely to fail. Also, thoughts on how low interest rates fit into this picture.
On how life insurers compromise rules on reserving using reinsurers that they own as subsidiaries. Also examines other ways that insurers weaken solvency.
On Insurance Investing, Part 6
On Insurance Investing, Part 7 [Final]
On how insurance has changed for investors over the past ten years, Price-to-Book vs Return on Equity Diagrams, and miscellaneous issues for those investing in insurance companies.
Really, it is not an insurable risk, which is why most companies underwriting LTC have lost money on it, and coverage has become less and less generous.
“As for those with long-term care policies, if they are old, keep paying on them, you will likely do well on them when you finally need to draw on the policies. You have benefits that benefits that can no longer be purchased. Enjoy the exclusive club you are in.”
“In summary, all news is not equal. The reactions to news, and the lack thereof, can tell us a lot about the intentions of large market actors. Do your homework well, and prosper off of the knowledge that it gives you regarding reactions, over-reactions, and under-reactions.”
On Risk-Based Liquidity, and Financial Regulation
On the Designation of Systemically Important Financial Institutions
The beginning of my arguments against the pointy-headed Financial Stability Oversight Commission [FSOC] and their inability to understand the solvency of non-bank financials.
“This brings me to my conclusion: stock splits are a momentum effect, but it is larger when companies are still have a cheap valuation.”
Qualitative reasoning is important. Read a lot, and learn to write well.
All good risk management prepares in advance to avoid risk, with strategies to mitigate risk as it happens taking a distant second place.
Temporary Prosperity at the Cost of Longer-term Prosperity
It’s easier for a generation to become prosperous if they push the bills onto their children and grandchildren. Eventually it catches up with a nation, and reduces opportunity for average people.
Is it better for small accounts to get no advice or advice that is conflicted? It is very hard to provide quality advice to small accounts.
The foolish do the best in a strong market
There is probably money to be made in analyzing the foibles of money managers, to create new strategies by taking on the opposite of what they are doing.
The trouble with VAR and other mathematical models of risk is that if it becomes the dominant paradigm, and everyone begins to use it, it creates distortions in the market, because institutions gravitate to asset classes that the model makes to appear artificially cheap. Then after a self-reinforcing cycle that boosts that now favored asset class to an unsupportable level, the cashflows underlying the asset can no longer support it, the market goes into reverse, and the VAR models encourage an undershoot. The same factors that lead to buying to an unfair level also cause selling to an unfair level.
Benchmarking and risk control through VAR only work when few market participants use them. When most people use them, it becomes like the portfolio insurance debacle of 1987. VAR becomes pro-cyclical at that point.
“Unions create inefficiency. This creates an opportunity for new technologies that perform the same function, but aren’t as labor-intensive. (E.g. integrated steel vs. mini-mills)”
If businesses anticipate a flow of financing, they will depend on it. Then a diminution or increase in the flow of investable funds will affect markets, even if the flow of investable funds remains positive or negative.
During a panic, it is useful to reflect on the degree to which the real economy has been driven by the financial economy. In the Great Depression, the degree was heavy; in the seventies, it was light. Today, my guess is that it is in-between, which makes it difficult to figure out the right strategy.
Modify Purchasing Power Parity by adding in stocks and bonds
An optimal currency board price basket would contain both assets and goods.
Expectations are a part of the game.
Market rents are typically fixed in size. When a strategy to exploit a particular market inefficiency gets too big, returns to the rent disappear, or even go negative prospectively, even if they appear exceedingly productive retrospectively.
Speculative companies should be evaluated on cash, burn rate, probability of success, size of potential market and margins at maturity.
Crashes are the result of a shift from a positive self-reinforcing cycle to a negative self-reinforcing cycle.
If an asset-backed security can produce a book return less than zero for reasons other than default, that asset-backed security should not be permitted as a reserve investment.
The Stock Price Matters, Regardless
Roughly one dozen ways that the stock price affects the marketing, operations and financing of publicly traded companies.
What NOT to do in Job Interviews
A somewhat humorous article of mistakes that I have made in job interviews. Also a comment on making sure that you fit the culture of the firm at which you are interviewing.
What to Do When Things are Nuts?
So you think that the market is overvalued? How do you adapt to that condition, while still leaving some room for opportunity if the market continues to rise.
Source: http://alephblog.com/2017/03/29/the-best-of-the-aleph-blog-part-26/
