There is a group of folks who believe that inflation is much higher than the numbers in the official reports. Paul Krugman calls them “inflation truthers.” In the 2000s, I might have been considered part of that crowd. I recognized that inflation data wasn’t being reported accurately, and said as much. I coined the phrase “inflation ex-inflation” […]
I have spilled a great deal of pixels and time in these pages discussing the importance of not letting your biases get the best of you as an investor. (See this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this). Further, when you are wrong, you must do more than merely acknowledge it: Embrace the error, understand it and learn from it. Traders who don’t learn […]
FT Alphaville has this awesome flowchart of Nomura’s analysis of Ukrainian political uncertainty, brilliantly titled Bank flowchart + geopolitics = acid trip. click for ginormous graphic This piece is cross-posted from The Big Picture with permission.
It’s a Myth that Conservatives Don’t Care About Inequality We’ve noted for years that it’s a myth that conservatives accept runaway inequality. Conservatives are very concerned about the stunning collapse of upward mobility. A poll from Gallup shows that a majority of Republicans think we’ve got too much inequality: Two out of three Americans are dissatisfied with the way income and wealth are currently […]
Source: Easan Katir This piece is cross-posted from The Big Picture with permission.
One of the favorite tropes of the “End the Fed” crowd is the “falling purchasing power of the U.S. dollar.” Google that phrase, and you will be rewarded with 91,100,000 results. (drop the “U.S.” and it doubles to 187,000,000 results). The problem is, nearly all of these arguments are wrong. As Matt Busigin of Macrofugue points out (echoed […]
Source: Barron’s If you have been paying any kind of attention to the mainstream media the past few years, you may have noticed quite a bit of bubble chatter. We have a tech IPO bubble and a stock bubble and of course a bond bubble. This is caused by a global central bank QE bubble. […]
“Signal-to-noise ratio” is an engineering concept that focuses on the amount of useful information being received compared with false or useless data. This is an especially important concept to investors. Over the past few years, I have been reducing the meaningless distractions in my investing process. You should, too. You want less of the annoying […]
I did a long interview with Forbes, we discuss some investing themes and ideas: “Here’s the thing I think most people have a hard time understanding and putting into context. To say stocks are cheap or expensive today is to simultaneously discuss two different things. The first is future earnings power. So the real question […]
Everyone The U.S. Government Owes Money To, In One Graph, broken down by category and by how much government debt they hold. Source: NPR This piece is cross-posted from The Big Picture with permission.