The older I get, the more value I find in seeing every day events from a very long term historical perspective. Especially when it comes to comparing market crashes, the rapid declines in stock prices in March 2020 were not quite “unprecedented”, and of course stockholders’ eventual outcomes depend on how well economies and corporate […]
This morning’s ferry read is the Credit Suisse Global Investment Returns Yearbook 2019, for which I have to thank this excellent Twitter thread by Cambria’s Meb Faber for pointing out. Two of the charts I found worth a screenshot and share here show shares of global stock markets have changed since 1900 by country (header […]
In recent memory, the global financial crisis of 2008-2009 is what most of us might think of as the last time when real estate investors lost significant amounts of money. Other than extreme cases like those, we often think of investing in physical property as being “safe as houses”. Today’s suggested reading is this UC […]
While I am often asked “is now a good time to invest?” in both booming and declining economic times, I have recently been asked more and more about whether the economy is due for its first global recession since 2008-2009, and how to invest in preparation for the next recession. I recently wrote a short […]
The mutual fund as we know it today is almost 100 years old, and following important steps in 1934 and 1940 and then in 1974, mutual funds can be thanked for helping a large percentage of average working individuals save trillions of dollars for retirement in ways pre 20th century history might not have imagined. […]
I recently re-read the 5th edition of Jeremy Siegel‘s classic book Stocks for the Long Run, and thought it would be worth snapping the following 13 thought-provoking charts for reference. Of course, this is just my summary, and I expect to continue having to refer back to the book for more re-reads. Chart 1: US […]
One of my favorite books is Ben Graham’s “The Intelligent Investor”. This page from the fourth revised edition (1973) gives a short but fascinating history of some amazing price swings in the not-too-obscure category of foreign government bonds, interesting in part because the government issuers aren’t around in the same form any more (Cuba had […]
My friend and colleague Umesh Desai, author of “The Singapore Blue Chips: The Rewards & Risks of Investing in Singapore’s Largest Corporations” will be presenting his book in Central, Hong Kong next Wednesday on August 2nd, 2017 at 4:30pm. Â I have written a brief book review earlier describing it as an easy, modular read on […]
My friend Umesh Desai recently gave me a signed copy of his book “Singapore Blue Chips: The Rewards and Risks of Investing in Singapore’s Largest Corporates”, which he co-authored with Nandini Vijayaraghavan. Â It is available from both the publisher and Amazon. The book is an easy, modular read with each chapter providing a concise history […]
Here is a chart showing the counterintuitive decade when “low yield beat high yield”, that is, low-yielding Japanese Government Bonds (JGBs) with a starting yield of 1.2% outperformed Australian government bonds with a much higher yield over 5%.