July 29th, the Federal Reserve announced the results of the CCAR process including the requested capital return actions for the big banks. Unsurprisingly to those that have been reading this newsletter, the results were very good and we have seen an influx of dramatic dividend increases and stock buybacks. Below I’ll outline a few of...Read More

Last night’s vote for Great Britain to exit the EU was a massive shot to the bow of the European establishment. While polls had been even, the betting odds were basically 8-1 that the country would stay in the EU, so markets are quite shocked at the result. In overnight trading, just about every asset...Read More

  Since the extremely weak May jobs report, interest rates have plummeted across the globe. There are now over $10 trillion in bonds that are trading at negative interest rates. This is unprecedented as the buyers of these bonds are guaranteeing themselves losses if they hold until maturity. This has pushed asset prices up as...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

Yesterday, Assured Guaranty reported very strong 1st quarter earnings and once again saw an increase in both operating and adjusted book value. Over the last year, the company has grown both metrics by roughly 15%, despite adding material reserves for its Puerto Rico exposures and paying a respectable 2% dividend. The stock still trades at...Read More

In perusing the WSJ today, an article caught my eye. The venerable Charles Schwab has become the latest company to discontinue offering load mutual funds, where investors pay what generally is a high commission in addition to regular fund fees, as a result of the new Department of Labor law requiring brokers to act as...Read More

As earnings season continues to develop, we have seen a bit of divergence in favor of value stocks. Companies that have been out of favor, due to difficult short-term business conditions, and that have incredibly low valuations have outperformed glamor stocks that trade at high multiples, based on the perception of safety. It is essential...Read More

There have been a few good articles lately on market valuations. We are in an extremely odd investment environment with hundreds of billions dollars’ worth of government bonds across the globe trading at negative interest rates. Basically, they are guaranteeing themselves a loss unless they can pick up a few pennies before a bigger sucker...Read More

Please enjoy TTCM’s latest research report on Bank of America: Valuation And Earnings Growth Potential Make BofA A BuyRead More

Today, Assured Guaranty announced its acquisition of fellow bond insurer CIFG.  This is now the 3rd acquisition AGO has made of another bond insurance company.  The others, which were FSA and Radian Asset, have been very successful thus far.  While this acquisition is a bit smaller, it looks very safe and should add a nice...Read More