“Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing.” – Warren Buffett. “Alternative investments should have positive expected returns and very low correlation to traditional assets” – Cliff Asness Our investing approach for 2018 […]
Regime Change and the Dangers of Hodling
Crypto is a new asset class but the old rules of investing still apply. Past returns are no guarantee of future results. Diversification applies to crypto along with the need to understand the underlying value proposition. Recognize potential risks, and when competition has eroded the […]
Unrealized Capital Gains
There is a little known problem with many mutual funds today…unrealized capital gains. Suppose you buy Vanguard’s S&P 500 Mutual Fund ($VFINX) and hold it over the next 10 years. You never sell it so you never pay any taxes…right? Actually, you might end […]
Streams and Forks
“A stream is simply a life context formed by all the information flowing towards you via a set of trusted connections — to free people, ideas and resources — from multiple networks. If in a traditional organization nothing is free and everything […]
Why Bitcoin Keeps Rising
Bitcoin’s relentless rise is understandable given the drivers: Each day, Bitcoin is less “new” – New things are scary. This year a number of high profile investors, podcasts, and companies starting talking about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies more generally. The more they talk […]
Why crypto is a new asset class
Summary Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ether are a new asset class that deserves consideration as part of a diversified portfolio. We compare Bitcoin and Ether with fiat money along nine factors. We find that there are real world advantages to […]
The Sustainable Growth Rate Myth
We got some flack for our stock market valuation. The key issue readers took issue with was (not surprisingly) the growth rate. As we said before, all the inputs required to value an index like the S&P 500 are impossible […]
A simple way to evaluate stock prices
Stock prices continue to climb. The obvious question is whether these prices can be justified by fundamentals. Here is a simple approach to evaluating the reasonability of stock prices. We find no evidence of a “bubble” and argue that valuations […]
In Search of Positive Skew
“Rule No.1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1.” – Warren Buffett Stocks and bonds typically have a “negative skew”. What this means is that there is a bigger chance of a large loss than a large gain. […]
Crypto Market Valuation
The team @intuitecon has been working through a detailed valuation of the cryptocurrency market since publishing our last piece on the subject here. Here are some preliminary thoughts on why we are not selling (yet). Since publishing this post in early […]