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Showing posts from January, 2009

A New Excuse: My Prescription Ran Out

The Telegraph (UK) gives us this article on the possibility that we might have "memory pills" (medicines that enhance our ability to learn and remember things more easily: The medicine has been designed originally to help treat Alzheimer's disease, but could be adapted and licensed for sale in a weaker form within the next few years. One brand of memory-enhancing pill is being developed by the multinational company AstraZeneca in collaboration with Targacept, an American company, while Epix Pharmaceuticals, also from the US, is developing another. Both have "cognitive-enhancing effects" which are aimed at treating patients with age-related memory loss. Read the whole thing here I expect that if the pills become available in the U.K., they'll make their way her into a black market long before they become legally available. My students have told me that there's a growing use of Adderal and Ritalin among their fellow students when studying for exams. I can

Good Bank, Bad Bank By Dr Seuss

Like many kids, mine grew up on Dr. Seuss. One of their particular favorites was "One Fish, Two Fish. Click here for a banking version from Joshua Brown. HT: The Big Picture .

Institutional Portfolios, Alternative Investments, and Liquidity

Before the recent meltdown in hedge funds, one of the regularly stated reasons for superior returns in "alternate investments" was that they are more exposed to "liquidity risk" (i.e. they can't be easily converted to cash without loss of value, and this results in higher required returns). Economics tells us that there's no such thing as a free lunch. So, here's recent (January 17th) story article from the Wall Street Journal that ties the two concepts together: The ideal investment portfolio is solid and liquid at the same time. Perhaps because this principle defies the common sense of physics, even some of the world's biggest investors have overlooked it. Now, with billions of dollars trapped in illiquid investments, many colleges and charities are cutting budgets at the worst imaginable time. Read the whole thing here :

Finance Professors: Hot or Not?

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A whiole back, I blogged on a research study by Felton, Koper, Mitchell and Stinson (sounds like a law firm, eh?) using RateMyProfessors evaluations to see whether the students' perceived hotness of their professors was related to their perceptions of professor quality. Crooked Timber (one of my favorite blogs) recently put this table up from the paper: Just in case you didn't notice, Finance professors were rated as the hottest among the business disciplines (and accounting was rated least hot). So if you're deciding between a PhD in Finance and Accounting, if you want hotter colleagues, choose Finance, but if you want to look better by comparison, go with accounting. But unfortunately, I definitely bring down the average. Ah well, back to the gym.

It's CFA Results Day And The Natives Are Restless

I just noticed a lot of hits today from searches related to "CFA Results". That's because today is the day that the results from the December 2008 Level 1 exam are released (they were actually released about 5 minutes ago). So, there are currently thousands logged into the CFA site and hiotting the "F5" button every couple of seconds. Good luck to you all. If you passed, congratulations -- you now get to register for the Level 2 exam in June. In case you're wondering, there's enough study time to make it through the exam -- many have done it before you. But, you should get on it as soon as possible -- there are only 129 days until the Level 2 exam. If you failed, here are some words of wisdom from one of the most well-known posters on the Analyst Forum website (which you should definitely use if you're studying for the CFA exams): If You Failed 1) You are in distinguished company I know a college finance professor who took 7 tries to pass

It's Easy Buying A Stake in a Public Company

Here's one of the better explanations I've recently read on the idea of fundamental analysis or "value" investing (from the Ideas Report: Buying a stake in a publicly traded company is deceptively easy. Log into your brokerage account, type in the ticker of the company whose stock you wish to buy, and— voilà !—you own a stake in the enterprise. Many investors don’t even refer to companies by their name; they simply invoke the ticker symbol. The ease with which stocks are bought and sold obscures the underlying nature of a stock market transaction and invites bad decision-making. The trick is to avoid thinking of a stock as a readily disposable piece of paper and instead consider that you are buying a percentage of a business whenever you purchase a share of stock. Read the whole thing here

How Do You Choose The Right Chart For Your Information?

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Now this is a cool flowchart - it works you through the decision process in deciding the rigth chart to best display your data. It's from The Extreme Presentation Method , which is a pretty good resource for those who regularly have to do these things, Here's another diagram from the same site - it lays out process you go through in designing a presentation : HT: The Big Picture

Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Credit Defautl Swaps - But Were Never Told (from RGE Monitor)

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Jim Mahar over at FinanceProfessor.com just linked to a fantastic explanation of Credit Default Swaps. Here's the opening lines: Credit default swaps (CDSs) have been identified in media accounts and by various commentators as sources of risk for the institutions that use them, as potential contributors to systemic risk, and as the underlying reason for the bailouts of Bear Stearns and AIG. These assessments are seriously wid e of the mark. They seem to reflect a misunderstanding of how CDSs work and how they contribute to risk management by banks and other intermediaries. In addition, the vigorous mark et that currently exists for CDSs is a significant source of market-based judgments on the credit conditions of large numbers of companies--information that is not publicly available anywhere else. Although the CDS market can be improved, excessive restrictions on it would create considerably more risk than it would eliminate. It also has a very nice diagram of a typical CDS (and

Biases in Implied Volatilities

There's a pretty substantial literature on biases in analyst's earnings forecasts. They usually define bias as a difference between the last estimated forecast of earnings and actual earnings. Here's a somewhat related paper - on errors in implied volatility estimates. In their paper "Implied and Realized Volatility in the Cross-Section of Equity Options" Manuel Ammann, David Skovmand and Michael Verhofen examine whether implied volatilites differ systematically from realized vlatilities, and whether those differences are related to firm risk (beta) size (market cap),growth opportunities (market/book), and momentum. Here's the abstract: Using a complete sample of US equity options, we analyze patterns of implied volatility in the cross-section of equity options with respect to stock characteristics. We find that high-beta stocks, small stocks, stocks with a low-market-to-book ratio, and non-momentum stocks trade at higher implied volatilities after co

This Is Why I Don't Check My Portfolio Too Often

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As usual, Scott Adams has a good take on things </a

Some Exceptional Students

Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to go to the graduation dinner for one of my students. It's times like these that make me realize just how much I enjoy being a professor. Like many (if not most) of my tribe, I get my share of clueless, unmotivated slackers in my classes (luckily, not that many). But since I run our student-managed fund and work closely with the students sitting for the CFA exam, I also get to see the absolute best students our college has to offer. This weekend was a perfect example. The guest of honor for the evening had taken several different classes with me, had been very involved in our student-managed investment fund, and had passed the CFA level 1 exam before he graduated. I'd guess that I've gotten to know him better than any student I've had in the last 12 years or so - he took one of the first investment classes I taught at Unknown University, and has been a constant presence in my office since. Among the other guests (alo

Doing Homework

The semester at Unknown University is now under way. So to kick it off, here's a chuckle. Back in the day, I remember getting a bit goofy while studying. But of course, I couldn't move like that since I'm a typically rhythm and coordination-challenged guy (but I repeat myself). HT: Rate Your Students

Thomas Sowell on "Affordable Housing"

Like most things Sowell writes, it's worth a read: Behind the housing boom and bust was one of those alluring but undefined phrases that are so popular in politics-- "affordable housing." It is hard for me to know specifically what politicians are talking about when they use this phrase. But then politics is about evoking emotions, not examining specifics. In looking back over my own life, I find it hard to think of a time when I didn't live in affordable housing. Read the whole thing here HT: Carpe Diem

Defending VaR - But You Still Need Common Sense

I recently blogged about an article by Joe Nocera in the New York Times Magazine. Suni Reyent at Seeking Alpha just wrote a response. One of the common criticisms of VaR by Nassim Taleb (and others) is that it incorrectly models the distribution of stock returns (or of whatever asset that VaR is being applied to) as a normal distribution. This would be a serious flaw, since the distribution of returns of many assets are leptokurtotic (i.e. have fatter tails than a normal distribution). In this piece, Reyent discusses how VaR is applied in practice, and adds that it often adjusts for the non-normality of returns. Having come from a practitioner's background, she's worked with this stuff often, so she knows what she's talking about. Read the article here.

Woman Auctions Off Her Virginity

This is off the usual Financial Rounds fare, but sometimes I can't resist. First here's the article: They say you should value having sex for the first time. That’s why I’m auctioning my virginity online—and the bidding is up to $3.8 million. When I put my virginity up for auction in September, it was in part a sociological experiment—I wanted to study the public's response. Now it seems that the tables have turned, and the public is studying me. You can read the whole thing here . Since i just had my third cup of coffee, a few random neurons started firing, and a few random thoughts popped out (my good friends would argue that "random" describe most of my thoughts). I realize that some of them are a bit finance-geekish, but if you don't like them, you're welcome to start your own blog: Wasn't there a punchline going something like ",,, now we're just haggling over terms", and a movie about this? I don't think I'll show this

Cost of Corporate Borrowing is Up

Because corporate borrowing costs were low in recent years, many companies loaded up on debt. Now, much of that debt is coming due at a time when companies have experienced slowdowns. Here's a recent article from the NYTimes Online, titled "Cost of Borrowing Zooms up For Corporations": Like consumers and homeowners, America’s corporations binged on easy credit when times were flush, racking up huge debts. Now the bills are due, and paying them back will not be easy, or cheap. This year alone, more than $700 billion in corporate loans will come due, according to Standard & Poor’s. That is the size of the federal bailout of the financial sector. Many companies were counting on being able to borrow more money to meet those obligations and kick their debt farther down the road. But with the credit markets still tight, corporations are being forced to pay much higher interest rates than they did a few years ago, putting more strain on balance sheets already hammered by f

"Piggybacking" In the Brokerage Industry (From Knowledge@Wharton)

Are market makers "naive providers of liquidity -- uninformed players operating from behind a firm Chinese Wall", or do they trade on information they get from insider trades? According to a new study by Christopher C. Géczy, adjunct finance professor and director of the Wharton Wealth Management Initiative and Jinghua Yan, a research analyst at Tykhe Capital, it looks like the second possibility is looking a lot more likely. The Wharton researchers, in a detailed parsing of four years of insider trading at 15 of Wall Street's largest brokerages, find that market makers executing insider trades at these firms appear to act on information gleaned from those trades. The evidence can be seen in the more aggressive prices they set for the company's stock following an insider trade. Put another way, compared to their peers, market makers affiliated with the brokers used by insiders post more aggressive ask quotes during periods when insiders trade. The study was underta

Stock Market Conditions and Finance Careers

Lately I've been talking to a lot of students who have concerns about how the current job market will affect their careers. So, I decided to revisit a forthcoming article in the Journal of Finance article by Paul Oyer of Standford titled: The Making Of A Banker: Macroeconomic Shocks, Career Choice, and Lifetime Income. He studies a group of Stanford MBA graduates from the 60s. Here's the abstract: I show that stock market shocks have important and lasting effects on the careers of MBAs. Stock market conditions while MBA students are in school have a large effect on whether they go directly to Wall Street upon graduation. Further, starting on Wall Street immediately upon graduation causes a person to be more likely to work there later and to earn, on average, substantially more money. The empirical results suggest that investment bankers are largely "made" by circumstance rather than "born" to work on Wall Street. In the introduction he says: I estimat

Stock Markets and Inaugurations

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Yesterday, the Dow dropped approximately 4%, and the S&P500 dropped by a little over 5% on Inauguration day. This was the worst "inauguration market" day in history. So now we'll wait to hear the talking heads either say how there's a correlation (or even a causation) between the two, or explain how there's not. In reality, it was probably more due to State Street Bank's disappointing earnings numbers - their stock plunged almost 60% on the news, and led many other financial stocks down. If markets are efficient (and they are, relatively speaking), Obama's inauguration should already have been priced in.

Jonathan Macey on Director Capture

Jonathan Macey is one of the "Big Dogs" of academic writing in corporate governance. He is the Sam Harris Professor of Corporate Lay, Corporate Finance, and Securities Law at Yale (and Deputy Dean of the Law School. He's written a boatload of books on the topic, and over a 150 articles in scholarly journals. In this piece (where he's guest blogging at the Icahn Report , he discusses the concept of "regulatory capture." In the academic world, particularly among political scientists and economists, "capture" occurs when decision-makers such as corporate directors favor certain vested interests such as incumbent management, despite the fact that they purport to be acting in the best interests of some other group, i.e. the shareholders. The problem of capture and the theories associated with the idea of capture are most closely associated with George Stigler, and the free-market Chicago School of Economic thought. Among the more interesting

The Academic Finance Job Market

I recently saw this analysis of the job market for econ Ph.D.s on the Economist's Free Exchange site: On the debit side, much attention focused on the fact that the AEA-run website , where potential employers of PhD economists advertise their positions, has added a new section called " Suspended or Cancelled Listings ". Here it is noted that a "non-trivial economic downturn" has forced some employers to suspend or cancel job searches. As of December 28th, a week before the actual interviews, 84 previously advertised searches had been called off, representing 5% of the number of jobs available by the reckoning of the director of the AEA, John Siegfried. Read the whole thing here . Since the Financial Rounds readership includes a pretty good number of finance academics, I thought I'd share some observations on the Academic Finance job market. Unlike the Econ one (which takes place pretty much at the AEA meeting), the Finance market is 2-tiered. The f

What's The Best Estimator of The Equity Risk Premium?

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I'm teaching advanced corporate finance this semester. As usual, I spend a fairly large chunk of time on the Weighted Average Cost of Capital. One of the issues in the CAPM approach to estimating the cost of equity is what estimate to use for the market risk premium. So of course, I has happy to find a paper by Aswath Damodaran titled "Equity Risk Premiums (ERP): Determinants, Estimation and Implications." Here's the abstract: Equity risk premiums are a central component of every risk and return model in fin ance and are a key input into estimating costs of equity and capital i n both corporate finance and valuation. Given their importance, it is surprising how haphazard the estimation of equity risk premiums remains in practice. In the standard approach to estimating equity risk premiums, historical returns are used, with the difference in annual returns on s tocks versus bonds over a long time period comprising the expected risk premium. We note the limitat

Stressed? Smash a Plate!

From anannova.com Stressed Japanese workers are paying for the chance to smash plates against a wall to ease credit crunch blues Stressed workers are flocking to The Venting Place in Tokyo where they pay to hurl crockery against a concrete wall, reports the Daily Telegraph. I'll suggest it to our dean. I think this could be big around midterms and finals.

Analysts' Recommendations and CEO Dismissals

Here's a pretty interesting governance piece, highlighted recently on the Wall Street Journal's Dealbook: Chief Executives Beware- Analysts May Seal Your Fate : An academic study found corporate boards are more likely to be influenced by the recommendations of equity analysts following the 2002 rule change that separated the analysts from investment bankers. The study conducted by professors at the Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California in Irvine and at the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management at Rice University in Houston, found that this increase in trust in analysts meant that boards are more likely than in the past to fire an under-performing chief executive based in part on analyst recommendations. The paper is titled CEO Dismissal: The Role of Investment Analysts as an External Control Mechanism, and it's authored by Margarethe Wiersema (of UC-Irvine) and Yan Zhang (of Rice University). It's a pretty good example of the way that

Robert Shiller at Authors@Google

Robert J. Shiller (finance professor at Yale) is one of the more well-known academics in the public sphere. He's written a couple of best-sellers ( "Irrational Exuberance " and "Subprime Solution" ), created the Case-Shiller Index of home prices, and just testified before the Bicameral Hearing On the Subprime Crisisr. In case you're interested, here's the video: And if you want more Shiller, here's a video of his recent authors@Google talk on his "Subprime Solution" book: HT: The Big Picture

Caffeine and Hallucinations

My students would say that this explains too much about met: People who take in the caffeine equivalent of three cups of brewed coffee (or seven cups of instant) are more likely to hallucinate, a new study suggests. The researchers found that people with a caffeine intake that high, whether it came from coffee, tea, chocolate or caffeinated energy drinks or pills, had a three-times-higher tendency to hear voices and see things that were not there than those who consumed the equivalent of a half-cup of brewed coffee (or one cup of instant coffee). Read the whole thing here . My students (and many of my friends ) know that I drink about 2-3 cups of caffeine daily. In my younger days (when I weighed about 130 lbs) I would average about 7 cups a day. "Roses are red, violets are blue, I'm schizophrenic... and so am I"

Testosterone and Traders

Are successful traders born, or made? Here's some evidence supporting the latter, from the Washington Post: A new study has found that men who were programmed in the womb to be the most responsive to testosterone tend to be the most successful financial traders, providing powerful support for the influence of the hormone over their decision-making. Read the whole thing here

Hugh Chavez and Reputation Capital

Venezuelan predident and general all-around jerk (I can think of better descriptors, but this is a generally family-friendly blog) Hugo Chavez was a very good example of a free cash flow problem on a national scale. He was flush with cash from Venezuela's huge oil reserves, and used oil wealth to play the part of loudmouth and anti-US demnagogue. Along the way, he hammered many of the large-multinational oil companies with increased taxes, nationalization of their oil fields, and raids on their offices. Now, with oil prices dropping, the Venezuelan economy is sputtering, and Chavez is suffering from cash shortages. So, he's reaching out to the same companies he previously gave the boot to (while seizing their assets). He's offering them access to Venezuela's oil fields. But it looks like his past actions might be causing some second thoughts: Under the current bidding rules, the onus for financing the new projects lies with the foreign companies, even though Pet

Another Investment Banking Blog

I was recently reading Mergers & Inquisitions (one of my regular reads), and saw this a mention of the blog titled Investment Banking Resumes . It's written by Anna Maria D'Souza. Here's her profile: I am a headhunter and have nine years of experience in recruiting senior investment bankers. I have a mission to help young people to start and build an investment banking career. If you're considering a career in investment banking, the site looks like it'll be well worth your time. A lot of the site is very "inside baseball", with information on compensation packages of star performers. But there are also a lot of useful tips on resume writing, cover letters, etc... It'll be added to my blogroll the next time I Update

Morgan Stanley Advertisement on SNL

Here's an oldie but goodie from Saturday Night Live, compliments of Barry Ritholtz (who seems to find a lot of these things). While you're at it, check out Hulu's videos - they have an amazing library of clips (and even entire shows), some of which date back to the 70s.

Stopping the Tenure Clock

Most people have misconceptions about stopping the tenure clock due to extraordinary circumstances (what does it involve, when can you do it, etc...). I know I did - it's not something that people talk about often, and some people view it as a weakness or failure. Luckily, Inside Higher education recently published a pretty good article titled Ignorance About "Stop the Clock" Policies that touches on a lot of the major issues. In a nutshell, stopping the clock merely means that a tenure track faculty that would have to go up for tenure five years after starting would be held to the same standards of research (and teaching), but would have six years to make the grade. In other words, if a school required five articles in :good" journal to be published in five years' time, the faculty member would then have six years to publish the five articles. It was particularly timely for me because I've been thinking about stopping mine for the year as I deal with th

Levered ETF Math

Many people use levered ETFs to either leverage (i.e. double) or hedge their exposure to an index Unfortunately, their results can often differ from what they expect. This Wall Street Journal gives a good explanation why in this article. It's a good illustration how volatility makes geometric and arithmetic averages differ.

Education Bureaucrats

Here's a great video on the "value added" from educational bureaycrats HT: Mungo at Kids Prefer Cheese .

VaR: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (with a Black Swan or Two Thrown In)

Joe Nocera at the NY Times recently wrote a very long (and very nice) piece on current risk management practices titled Risk Mismanagement. Among the topics touched on: A short, intuitive, and accurate explanation of VaR ( Value at Risk ) A pretty good history lesson on the development of VaR at JP Morgan in the late 80s and early 90s. You can't have an article on risk management without Nassim Taleb *. So, of course he makes an appearance. A description of some of the ways VaR is used in practice. Not surprisingly, the "testbook" treatment of VaR doesn't come anywhere close to telling the whole story. And even better, it's a pretty easy read. Check it out here . * Paul Wilmott has said (tongue in cheek, I'm sure) that he mentions Nassim Taleb occasionally on his blog because it increases traffic from Google searches. That's definitely not something I'd do. No. Never. Well, hardly ever...

Stock Picking Ability and Value Investing

Andy Kern and Welsey Gray are two finance doctoral student who also run the blog Empirical Finance Research . They've just put a study up on SSRN titled " Fundamental Value Investors: Characteristics and Performance ." In it, they examine the investment recommendations of a fairly large and sophisticated community of fundamental value investors (the folks at Valueinvestorclub.com ): The data in this study are collected from a private internet community called Valueinvestorsclub.com (VIC), proclaimed by the founders to be an “exclusive online investment club where top investors share their best ideas.”1 The site has been heralded in many business publications as a top-notch resource for anyone who can attain membership (Financial Times, Barron’s, Business Week, and Forbes among others). The site was founded by Joel Greenblatt and John Petry, both successful value investors and managers of the large hedge fund Gotham Capital. It was created with $400,000 of start-up ca

Time To Get Back To Work

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As I get ready to start another semester at Unknown University, this reminds me - I need to check in with my graduate assistant.

Great List of Business-Related Movies

Business Pundit has put together a great list of business-related movies. He lists a number of good finance-related ones that I bring up (and sometimes show clips from) in class. They include: Other People's Money, with one of my favorite finance film characters (Larry the Liquidator) giving one of my favorite speeches. Wall Street, with the immortal Gordon Gekko's "Greed is Good" speech. Stand and Deliver (not really a business movie, but still one of my favorites). Trading Places (with my favorite trading floor scenes ever). Glengarry Glen Ross, with another great speech (Caution - not safe for work) It's a Wonderful Life (a great illustration of an old fashioned bank run) For another list, go to Larry Ribstein's BusFilm site. HT: Newmark's Door

The Cheech and Chong Indicator

In my continuing quest to bring you the most up-to-date market research, I give you the Cheech and Chong Indicator (compliments of Minyanville, which is almost always good for a laugh): August 12, 2008, a date which will forever live in infamy, for that was the date I discovered and first made public the stunning relationship between the career arcs of the comedic dope-smoking duo Cheech & Chong and economic devastation. What is this relationship? Simply put, I discovered that the popularity of Cheech & Chong is inversely correlated to the movement of the United States stock market. In other words, the more popular Cheech & Chong are, the less popular stocks are. Read the whole thing here.

Another Blog - The Investor's Consigliere

What can I say. They had me at the name .

The Annual Korn-Ferry Board of Directors Study

Whether you're a researcher or practitioner in the field of corporate governance, the annual Korn-Ferry Survey of boards of directors is a must read (I even cited an earlier version in my dissertation years ago). Here's a bit from the overview in the beginning of the survey ...It is more work and less play for today’s corporate directors, and, perhaps surprisingly, they seem to like it that way. A high level of job satisfaction is one of the trends identified in the 34th Annual Korn/Ferry International Board of Directors Study, which also found that directors serve on fewer boards but work longer hours. In addition, boards are actually smaller today. According to analysis of information reported in the proxies of 891 FORTUNE 1000 companies, we found that boards average 10 directors in size, with only two being full-time company employees. Women and minorities have been very successful in achieving directorships, when viewed historically over three decades. But, the proxy data

CareerJournal: The Best and Worst Jobs

Here's a nice piece from Career Journal on a recent survey of "best and worst jobs". The study, released Tuesday from CareerCast.com, a new job site, evaluates 200 professions to determine the best and worst according to five criteria inherent to every job: environment, income, employment outlook, physical demands and stress. (CareerCast.com is published by Adicio Inc., in which Wall Street Journal owner News Corp. holds a minority stake.) The findings were compiled by Les Krantz, author of "Jobs Rated Almanac," and are based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau, as well as studies from trade associations and Mr. Krantz's own expertise. One theme that sticks out is that math skills are in style: six of the top ten jobs require some serious math chops. In fact, the top three spots are listed as "Mathematician", "Actuary", and "Statistician", and there a few more in the 11-20 range. Of course, o

Be Careful Who You Delegate To

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As usual, Scott Adams nails it. Rule # 1 should be "be careful who you delegate to". Rule #2 should be "Don't tick off your secretary (or anyone else's)".

R.I.P. Richard John Neuhaus

Although this is a bit off topic, I just learned (from the Evangelical Outpost) that Richard John Neuhaus recently passed away. He was one of the lights of the evangelical community, and wrote a marvelous essay titled Born Towards Dying (and no, it's not maudlin at all). Here's a snippet: It was a couple of days after leaving intensive care, and it was night. I could hear patients in adjoining rooms moaning and mumbling and occasionally calling out; the surrounding medical machines were pumping and sucking and bleeping as usual. Then, all of a sudden, I was jerked into an utterly lucid state of awareness. I was sitting up in the bed staring intently into the darkness, although in fact I knew my body was lying flat. What I was staring at was a color like blue and purple, and vaguely in the form of hanging drapery. By the drapery were two “presences.” I saw them and yet did not see them, and I cannot explain that. But they were there, and I knew that I was not tied to the bed

Fama and French Have a Blog

There are few finance academics who's work is more well known (and cited) than Eugene Fama and Kenneth French. It turns out that they just started blogging. In their first few posts, they've touched on the bailout, government regulations, whether the recent turmoil is evidence against market efficiency, and more. You can read it here - I'd highly recommend adding it into your feed reader. After all, it's Fama and French (need I say more?) And a thanks to regular reader Jeff V. for the tip.

Another One Out of The Nest

I just got an email from one of my favorite "frequent flier" students. He holds the record for taking the most classes from me -- three different classes, one of which he took twice (the student-managed investment fund class). He just found out that he got the job he was hoping for. It wasn't his dream job (an assistant analyst position at an Investment Management firm), but in this economy, it's a pretty good one. It's back office, but since he's taking the CFA Level 2 exam this June, he has a good chance of networking himself into the front office in the next couple of years. Since I run the Student-Managed Fund at my school and am heavily involved in helping the students work towards the CFA exams, I end up getting to know many of our best students (neither the student managed fund nor the CFA scholarships are open to everyone, and I play a significant part in deciding who gets in for both programs). So I consider both groups to be "my" stude

Marsalis Gives A Smackdown to Today's Students

Last semester, I had a particularly toxic group of part-time MBA students. By the third week, I started thinking of them as the M-B-Abies. By the seventh week, I thought of them as the Uberwhiners. But by the end, they had earned the designation of the MBAstards. So this hit a nerve: I'm not bitter - I'm just sayin...

An Excellent Resource On Investment Banking Interviews

I've been a long-time reader of Mergers and Inquisitions (at least, I've read it since its start). The guy who writes it ("The Inquisitor") has a couple of years experience in investment banking, but left the industry a while ago to pursue other interests. He writes most often on the process of getting a job in investment banking, what the life of a low-level investment banking scut-puppy is like, and so on. He's funny, seems to know his stuff, writes well, and links to this blog, so I couldn't ask for more. A student of mine is going today to visit an alumni at a major investment bank. The alum is an Managing Director at the firm and has taken the student under his wing. He invited the student to spend the day at the bank, and is having him squired around by a couple of mid-level folks to help the student learn more about the firm and hone his pitch for when he gets his internship interview. As part of his preparation, I had the student read al

Serious Nerd Humor

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If you're a stats nerd, you might find this amusing. If not, just move along. For more of the same, go to XKCD .

Interview With Baupost Group President Seth Klarman

Seth Klarman, is the president of Boston hedge fund the Baupost Group. He's known as one of the savviest value investors around, having earned a 26% average annual return over the last 26 years. In fact, he was asked to write the foreword to the latest edition of Graham and Dodd's classic "Value Investing." Here's an interview he gave to the Harvard Business School Bulletin back in December. In it, he talks about why he's a value investor, target returns (he doesn't believe in them), the credit crisis, and much more. Read it here

40 Facts About Sleep

Here are some interesting sleep facts from the National Sleep Research Project . Since we're having a baby in April, this caught my eye: ...a new baby typically results in 400-750 hours of lost sleep in the first year. Only that much? HT: Craig Newmark

Update on The Unknown Son

So far, Unknown Son is recovering nicely from his surgery on Monday. It looks like he'll be getting his chest drainige tube out today. That means the only tube left in will be the IV that gives him fluids, Last night he ate two small pancakes with peanut butter (a taste he got from his DaD), he even took a couple of short walks (about 50 feet). Today, we'll go for as many walks as he can handle. In the meanwhile, there are always videos. For now, it's the Muppet Movie . What can I say - I believe in a classical education. It'll still be a couple of days before he gets discharged, but for now - Wocka Wocka Wocka. Updated 1:30 -- he just got the chest drainage tube out, and they've capped his IV (it was only giving a minimal amount of fluid, anyway). So, he might conceivably be home tomorrow. But we'll see.

What Topics Do I Blog About The Most?

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Here's a word cloud for Financial Rounds I made at Wordle (click on the image for a larger version). For those who aren't familiar with a word cloud, it's a graphic representation of frequencies - the more often a word appears, the larger the word in the cloud. Looks like I've been blogging a lot about the credit crisis --not all that surprising, when you stop to think about it.

How Do Stocks Perform During and After Recessions?

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Here's some (as Barry Ritholtz calls it) "recession chart porn": HT: The Big Picture