Equity and bond markets had a brutal week as today’s CPI report confirmed that inflation has accelerated to a 40-year high, which has traders speculating that the Fed will have to raise rates faster than expected.  In addition to that data, we saw the lowest Consumer Confidence number in the surveys history, which dates back...Read More

On Wednesday the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 50 bps, or 1/2%.  Initially the market reacted favorably to this with a strong rally on Wednesday, only to be reversed with the biggest down day since 2020 on Thursday.  Tech/glamour stocks have simply been getting obliterated.  Tesla dropped 8.3% on the day, while Amazon dropped...Read More

The Nasdaq is now officially in a bear market as defined by a 20% decline from the highs, while the S&P 500 and Dow Jones indices are in corrections, with losses greater than 10%.  The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the economic sanctions brought against Russia in response are a major deal for the global...Read More

Well, that was one awful week that we just had, for much of the world, and certainly in financial markets.  I know I feel like I aged a decade this week.  The stock market has been increasingly worried about this Coronavirus over the last few weeks, leading to increased volatility and large selloffs.  This, combined...Read More

We had a feeling Monday would be bad and boy, did it deliver with the stock market dropping by nearly 8%, now down 19% in just 13 trading sessions.  The Oil and Gas Exploration and Production ETF was down 37% today alone!  This market selloff is now bigger than what we saw in late 2018,...Read More

This has been a very busy week for earnings releases on some of our largest investments.  I just wanted to provide a quick update on a few of them, as they were meaningful. Assured Guaranty (AGO), was up roughly 7% after reporting a very strong quarter and a particularly attractive acquisition.  Net income was $142MM,...Read More

Warren Buffett's first rule of investing is not to lose money. His second rule is not to forget about the first rule. For those of you that have been with us for years, you have heard us talk a lot about maximizing risk-adjusted returns...Read More

Today it was announced that TIAA was buying Everbank (EVER) for $19.50 per share.  Everbank is a very average bank with lower returns on equity than the big banks.  As of the 2nd quarter 2016, Everbank’s tangible book value per share was $13.24 meaning that TIAA is paying right around 1.5 times tangible book.  Because...Read More

The basic tenets to value investing and margin of safety are the following: Every stock is a fractional share of an actual business. Every business or stock has an “intrinsic value.” The “intrinsic value” of a business generally changes at a much slower rate than the price of a publicly traded stock can change. Over...Read More

It has been quite a bizarre 2016 thus far in the equity markets.  We’ve seen a dramatic selloff and global bear market.  Then we saw a reasonable recovery in March.  Some of the worst performing economies such as Brazil have had the best stock market returns, while many others are still deeply in the red. ...Read More