The boy who cried wolf about an emerging markets sovereign and corporate debt crisis
These are good times for all those who’ve been crying wolf about market crashes and economic crises for the past couple of decades. It just took two decades, but it seems like most of those apocalyptic predictions are partially starting to come true. The Weimar Republic people had been crying wolf about inflation since 2008.…
What’s old is new again
A few things that made me go, ooh, that’s interesting. What’s old is new again The Lindy Effect is this notion that the longer something survives, the less likely it is to die. When it comes to frauds, pump and dump schemes are Lindy. Pump and dump schemes have been going strong for over 400+ years since the…
SPACtacular
A few things I learned this week. The post-2008 period was like a rave party for the financial markets. The central banks around the world had the hottest parties with cheap tickets, booze, and food. The parties were all the rage for well over a decade. But, it was 5 AM in 2020, and the…
Yield curve meets Munger
Here’s what I learned this week. One thing is that I’m going to be poor, but here are a few other things. Charlie Munger famously said, “There are all kinds of tricks that I just got into by accident in life. One is to invert all the time.” Looks like the US bond yield curves…
Making sense of the Russia-Ukraine conflict
If you had the power to bring back someone from the dead, who would it be? I’m guessing a dear one, favorite actor, musician? Not me. I’d bring back that Chinese guy who cast this curse: May you live in interesting times! Not because I like the dude. No! It’s because I want the pleasure,…
Niall Ferguson on money and cryptocurrencies
Niall Ferguson is one of the smartest and the most provocative financial historians of our time. His controversial reading of history has earned him a reputation as an enfant terrible among historians. He’s also a prolific author with 16 books on subjects ranging from the history of money, Rothschilds, war, Kissinger, and pandemics. His name…
There’s too much of everything
The amount of new content created every day on the internet is astounding. It goes without saying that a lot of it’s nonsense, but there’s plenty of good stuff. It probably takes a few months to consume what you liked and saved just today. It’s either that or I’m bloody lazy 😅 This has become…
What a time to be in the markets
Today was a bad day for smallcaps. The Nifty Smallcap 250 index was down by 2.59%. No, this isn’t a post about “smallcaps are risky”. Although, I don’t who reads this thing, but I’ll say it – smallcaps are super risky. DSP Smallcap Fund was down 65% at the depths of the 2008 bear market.…
A few good reads
It’s Some of America’s Richest Farmland. But What Is It Without Water? Private Equity: Is There Anything Special There? The Impact of Intangibles on Base Rates The five most revealing numbers in the Robinhood IPO prospectus
Miser and miserable
On balance, the personal finance bloggers and the gurus have done a lot to educate people. But sometimes, it feels like they undo a lot of that work with ridiculous nonsense that they preach. If you listen to some of these people, you’ll learn that you’re ruining your retirement just by drinking a cup of…