Meb Faber Research – Stock Market and Investing Blog

The stock markets are very close to bear territory (one more day like today and it will be an official bear market in the S&P 500). I love this Bev Doolittle painting so I had to repost it.Long time readers know I am a big fan of commodities. After today's dump in stocks (and run up in...

Here are three designs from the first book cover design contest. I currently have another contest running on Worth1000 that you can view here. Please be honest with your opinions - leave a comment on what you like and don't like. If you don't like any, say so!http://s3.polldaddy.com/p/633842.js Which Cover Design is the Best? ...

Kind of like PowerShares launching their private equity ETFs, does the slew of new commodity ETFs signal a top? In my inbox today:iPath® Global Carbon (GRN) iPath® Dow Jones-AIG Softs Total Return Sub-Index (JJS) iPath® Dow Jones-AIG Precious Metals Total Return Sub-Index (JJP) iPath® Dow Jones-AIG Aluminum Total Return Sub-Index (JJU) iPath® Dow Jones-AIG Cocoa Total...

Glad I didn't write my book on Google docs."11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly...

Reading anything interesting? Send me your links. . .----It is always nice to see a model continue to perform out-of-sample. Below are the results of the "Quant Approach to TAA" paper since it left off in 2005. Equity-like returns with bond-like volatility and low drawdowns. Obviously much of this outperformance is due to the spectacular run...

I'm not much of a ranter, but it doesn't make any sense to me to continue to focus on dividends when there has clearly been a structural change in the market (that happened way back in 1982). (For newer readers there is background reading with lots of links at the end.) Dogs of the Dow is simply...

The Sharpe Ratio is a measure of the risk-adjusted return of an investment. While there are a lot of ways to measure risk, the Sharpe Ratio uses the volatility as measured by the standard deviation of returns. Originally developed by Stanford Professor William Sharpe, it is simply the return of an investment (R) minus cash sitting in T-bills...

Princeton-Newport is one of the best performing hedge funds of all time, and for a good review check out the great book Fortune's Formula(more in the next post). 15% per year for 20 years and 3 down months is a pretty enviable track record. Thorp has a chapter in The Best of Wilmott, and you can actually download the...

How is it that the Celtics are only trading at slightly better than even odds to win the NBA title? From Tradesports:----Brits turning down free money.----Samuel Israel clearly faked it and made a run for it. It reminds me of some the the great financial thrillers by Paul Erdman (The Set-Up).----Buffett hates fees - his bet against...

I just read El-Erian's new book When Markets Collide this past weekend. Am I the only person to notice that his allocation only adds up to 98%? Weird. (I just added 2% to cash.) I did like this quote from the book which reminded me of my post a couple months ago on optimizing happiness:"There is growing talk...