Meb Faber Research – Stock Market and Investing Blog

If my friend Wes keeps it up he will soon be publishing more than Harry Kat (whose titles, including some Spice Girls themed, are the academic versions of Altucher's blog posts).  He just put out another paper on whether buy side ideas from SumZero have any value ( Do Buy-Recommendations Have Investment Value?).  This follows up an earlier paper...

We're finishing up a fun little paper internally on currencies and just saw this  paper from the folks at BIS this weekend (via Alea):  FX Strategies in Periods of Distress.  We've mentioned before one of the reasons for the negative carry skew is the valuation of the basket at times... Also there is a new paper out from our buddies...

1.  Since I assume most of you are not on Twitter, I've added a Twitter box on the right side of the page that will post my (re)tweets.  Often I'll link to good reads that never make it onto the blog so now you can find them here.  If you're on Twitter you can find me @MebFaber. 2.  I created...

QVT Financial, Carl Icahn, Rentech, Scout, and Ruane, Cunniff, and Goldfarb are all up over 15% YTD (top 10 holdings, long only via AlphaClone).

I think this is a really big deal.  The average active mutual fund has a 0.3% to 2.0% per year tax disadvantage to an ETF (passive or active). Was waiting for someone to put out a study like this - Managing Tax Challenges (granted it is by iShares so they are blowing their own horn).  Further reading from my buddy...

Morningstar does produce some beautiful publications: Deja Vu All Over Again The Real World is Not Normal        

After my post the other day on Real Returns, my father thought he would send me a real time example.  So, I opened a letter the yesterday with a check inside.  The check was written by my great grandfather in the 1910s for $0.50.  He was a farmer that immigrated from Les Martigny-Baines, Voges France and ended up in...

My blog is too boring/academic to get many hecklers (though I still get a few).  And almost always, the hecklers are anonymous (or at least try to be).  You have to have a thick skin to be a writer, and I can't imagine the inbox of some of my fellow writers like Altucher. I once used to grab some meals...

Here is a PPT on inequality from Prof. Hendricks, as well as a table of tax rates from "How Tax Efficient are Equity Styles?" by Israel and Moskowitz. Click to enlarge:  

The post below is very important, and is something most investors never really grasp. I used to consider writing a book on this topic, and still might, but condensed it into a really short post below.  Let me know what you think. I remember hearing about the magic of compounding in high school.  The example was that if you...