Meb Faber Research – Stock Market and Investing Blog

If I asked you if US stocks were at all time highs, what would you say?  Yes?  No? What if they are both right? Lots of disinformation spilling around out there.  Below are four series.   S&P 500 Price Return S&P 500 Total Return (including dividends) S&P 500 Price Return after inflation S&P 500 Total Return (including dividends) after inflation The two in bold are at...

Some have expressed confusion as to the format of premium, so below is a demonstration.  I'm going to do CAPE updates tomorrow then do a 10 part QTAA series for the 2013 paper update next week.  Email in any questions or thoughts... First, a summary: Idea Farm - 2-3 private emails per week, curated by me, public and private newsletters.  Short summary...

Below are a few interesting events in the next few months, I starred the ones that I will be attending for sure (including SF next week and NYC the following) if anyone wants to meetup.  Although hoping to attend all if possible! *Wine Retreat, Sonoma, CA, April 5th Grant's, NYC,  April 9th Real Return Investing with Rob Arnott, Santa Barbara, CA.  April...

I was watching this Pabrai video below when I saw an interesting slide below that mentioned cannibals (stock buybacks) as well as cloning (following other successful investors).  Tracking his portfolio through 13Fs would have beaten the market by over 7% a year since 2004, not bad!  Though you would have had to sit through a whopping 77% drawdown...ouch. (Source...

I had not seen this newish offering until they emailed me recently - the Bloodhound System.  It is a quant stock screener/backtester in the same style as Portfolio123.  It has data back to the late 1980s cobbled together from a number of sources like Thompson, Reuters, and Compustat- best of all it is point in time.  Costs range from...

Nice article by USA Today on the number of stocks listed declining over the years.  Did you know there are only 3700 stocks in the Wilshire 5000?   I am surprised this doesn't have much of an effect on market cap / GDP but guess it is dominated by the largest of cap stocks?  May run the numbers later...via @AlexRubalcava

Slowly but surely the world is waking up to the silliness of just focusing on dividends in isolation. (via YCharts (via Aleph) that also has a Net Payout Yield screener.) "Why do people love dividends? Because they don’t understand either corporate finance or taxes." Dumb Idea: Dividends Are Good For You Cashing In On Stealth Dividends

I'll be updating the country CAPE values at the end of the quarter, but I thought this examination was really interesting.  Earlier this week we talked about how the US was allowed to have a higher CAPE valuation due to low inflation.  The question then arose from readers, should we be making adjustments for CAPE values based on inflation...

Nothing like a 99% drawdown (if/when the market reopens) to rattle the nerves of a buy and hold apologist.  Remember, just tell the local Cypriot that they need to just hold through this downturn, and return 10% a year for the next 40 years to breakeven.  Remember to have a long term perspective, that's what's important here!  Stocks are...

I know the first quarter isn't over yet but I have some other things on my plate this week.  Below are 10 broad ETFs and their return for Q1 (that despite all of this Cyprus hand-wringing was a fantastic quarter for US Stocks).