Lance on Feb 15 2008 | Filed under: Economics, Federal Reserve, Hedge Funds, Latest data, economy, today's links
Bad news for the monolines. FGIC just got downgraded today to AA. That pretty much puts them out of the business of insuring municipal bonds.
NYS Commissioner of Insurance has suggested splitting the Muni bond business from the rest of the insurers. FGIC seems to now think that isn’t a bad idea. Of course, since Elliot [...]
Lance on Feb 11 2008 | Filed under: Absolute Return, Asset Allocation, Domestic Equities, Great Investors, Hedge Funds, Relative Return, Risk, Valuation, indexes, real estate
The recent downturn from the high in October has led to a great deal of chatter about the markets being cheap. That the recent turmoil has presented us with wonderful buying opportunities based on valuation. Readers here know that I disagree, and vehemently. Which doesn’t mean there isn’t money to be made as speculators. Certainly [...]
Lance on Feb 03 2008 | Filed under: Hedge Funds, benchmarks, indexes
Index investing is often described as “passive” or “beta” investing. However, one thing that is often looked past is exactly how active the construction process of indexes is in practice. Steve Galbraith used to say when I, and he, was with Morgan Stanley (before he went to manage money with Maverick Capital) that buying S&P500 [...]
Lance on Jan 29 2008 | Filed under: Absolute Return, Asset Allocation, Commodities, Developing Markets, Domestic Equities, Domestic Fixed Income, Great Investors, Hedge Funds, International Equities, Managed Futures, Portable Alpha, Relative Return, Risk
Finally it is the long-term investor, he who most promotes the public interest, who will in practice come in for most criticism, wherever investment funds are managed by committees or boards or banks. For it is in the essence of his behaviour that he should be eccentric, unconventional and rash in the eyes of average [...]
Lance on Jan 25 2008 | Filed under: Absolute Return, Asset Allocation, China, Domestic Equities, Economic Indicators, Economics, Federal Reserve, Global Equity, Hedge Funds, International Equities, Latest data, Risk, today's links
Morningstar takes a look at the Long/Short category of mutual funds. They, like I, appreciate John Hussman.
China turned in yet another double digit year:
China’s economy grew by 11.4 per cent in 2007, the highest pace in 13 years, but the trend of decelerating exports to a slowing US recorded in the final two quarters is [...]
Lance on Jan 15 2008 | Filed under: Absolute Return, Asset Allocation, Hedge Funds, Latest data, Risk
For investors with the assets to use a full fledged fund of hedge funds, who do we turn to? A collection of Tiger Cubs who had a fine year, so this does not surprise us. From Bloomberg:
Hedge-fund managers known as the Tiger Cubs because they learned to pick stocks at Julian Robertson’s Tiger Management LLC [...]
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