Knowledge Center

Whether the transformation in monetary worldview from Martin’s generation to our own is a good thing or a bad thing is for the bondholders to judge.

“The bull market in everything” – stocks, bonds, Picassos, bitcoin, real estate – is over. Actually, not every bull market is kaput, contended David Rosenberg, leadoff speaker at the April 10 Grant’s Conference.

“A discount that you can actually do something about, that is objective and that, while you sit there is not dead money.”

“Big” and “asset-light” are the reigning ideas in the restaurant franchise business. “I’m here to tell you this Shangri-La doesn’t go on forever.”

Howard Marks reflected on the asset class which he wouldn’t go near—hasn’t touched, in fact, in 40 years.

When a company’s stock falls out of bed while the same company’s debt remains securely under the covers, someone is going to make money.

“Two assets: Both go up, and yet they are strongly negatively correlated day-to-day. Nirvana.”

This biggest risk in holding gold bullion? “Career risk,” came the answer. They’ll fire you for taking leave of your senses.

The blockchain is, “a crappy technology and a useless technology,” our speaker matter-of-factly informed the Grant’s audience.

“The biggest mistake is actually the trades you didn’t do and the reasons for why you didn’t do those trades,” said the hedge-fund titan John Burbank.

In which Grant’s erred: U.S. investors may not, in fact, receive capital-gains tax treatment on bonds purchased at a discount to face value and held to maturity.

The Fed’s program of balance-sheet reduction brings to mind the punchline of the old trader’s joke: “Sell to whom?”

The index is not a company you want to buy.

A grand tour of the housing market and mortgage finance now that the bubble-era round trip in home prices is over and done. Also, the thriving mortgage vendor that’s poised to thrive less.

South of the border, yields don’t comport with the news.

The loneliest corporate stakeholders need a raise.

Managerial insult compounds interest-rate injury.

Profiting from the negative.

The zombies didn’t just climb up out of the graves by themselves.

No tax experts are we, but 20% is better than 37%.

Spread compression has lately been the story in fixed-income investing, in EM debt and junk bonds alike. Now comes decompression.

The Swiss prepare to vote up or down on a proposition to abolish double-entry bookkeeping in the accounts of the central bank. Turning chocolate into kale?

The strategy of the “three arrows” is at risk. What next for one of the strongest monetary brands not on the blockchain?

We hoist an amber light not only for the countries and markets in obvious and financially close proximity to the “biggest and strangest thing in the world,” but also to just about anyone, anywhere who has money at risk.

Not all zombie firms are created equal.

The United States is poised to overtake Saudi Arabia in energy production this year, though you wouldn’t know it by the slump in the prices of a trio of known Grant’s picks to click.

The one-eyed bond is king in Mario Draghi’s land of the blind.

Something beyond the grudging yield on Warren Buffet’s Treasury bills to compensate the patient investor?

Sooner or later, the inevitable comes to pass.

Radical monetary innovations got a fair trial in France exactly 300 years ago. In the resulting spectacular boom and bust, a cautionary story for our time.

You might not suppose there’s much to quarrel with in the results of this titan of second-hand transportation and known Grant’s pick not to click. Still and all, maturities are lengthening, rates are rising and prices are softening.

Left with little more to cut, what next for the brilliant Brazilians?

Ordinarily, the Ten Commandments do not impinge on the legal interpretation of bond indentures, especially in very large transactions.

The bull stock market is a fact, the coming bear bond market a hypothesis. Imagination is no substitute for a margin of safety.

Imagine if IBM accounted for its pension liabilities the same way as the Treasury does. No, don’t imagine. It’s too frightening.

The government will borrow more in relation to GDP next fiscal year than it has borrowed in any fiscal year since 1945. A reason or two why Dick Cheney may yet stand corrected.

With valuations at record highs and high-yield credit spreads at decade lows, it’s the heyday of private equity. One question: Where are the limited partners’ yachts?

Mispriced, profuse and – from the point of view of refinancing risk – vulnerable is the debt of a certain Goliath. Wherein brew masters meet leverage artists.

Visiting Yanks have shaken their heads before, but don’t Canadian house prices look a little high? Yours to ponder, Bank of Canada.

The whys and wherefores of the stock-market volatility storm in fewer than 700 words.

At risk is the government's credit and the prices of the government's securities. What's the opposite of Fort Knox?

The cyclical stars are seemingly aligned, except for the dim star of inflation. Now comes a survey of the opportunities in – bonds.

Not even the irreplaceable heretic of the Bank for International Settlements can help but dither. It's the time for action.

Grant's lifts its fatwa on a known pick-not-to-click for reasons related not to where the company makes its headquarters but to the capital of rent-seeking.

No mystery about the common equity of this particular enterprise. It goes up. The mystery concerns the bonds. Why does anyone buy them?

Whatever could go wrong as we approach the ninth anniversary of the stock-market bottom?

The Big Mac (adjusted index)

Could the boom in alt-currencies disrupt the policy-making monopoly of the fiat central banks? What the consensual suspension of the law against private-sector counterfeiting has wrought.

Contagious, our bullishness is so far not. We write to freshen an equity story and to highlight a pair of fetching bonds.

In which we close out a deep value investment. Here’s to you, “the most exciting city in America.”

Old-time travel agents are gone. Middlemen are going. Now taste and technology are closing in a supposed untouchable franchise.

Never mind sex, data breaches or intellectual-property jiggery-pokery. The trouble with Uber is that it has lost money, it is losing money and it will lose money.

Yes, a certain large, picturesque troubled country deserves a break, but not with your money. Sell the stocks, sell the bonds, sell the currency.

Not all signs are on-message, and more than a few are concerning.