Meb Faber Research – Stock Market and Investing Blog

Can listed hedge funds take you where you want to go - or are their benefits merely an illusion?I don't know why listed hedge funds don't get any press in the US. I used to post quite regularly on the topic, but have not re-examined the space in some time. There are roughly 40-50 listed hedge funds...

An economics professor and a grad student are walking along the sidewalk, and the grad student spots a twenty dollar bill on the sidewalk. He says, “Hey professor, look, a twenty dollar bill.” The professor says, “Nonsense. If there were a twenty dollar bill on the street, someone would have picked it up already.” They walk past, and a...

I used to get so infuriated when one of my friends would forward me an email that said something along the lines of, "If you forward this email Microsoft has a beta tracking system that will then send you $250". It would take all my self restraint not to 'reply all' with various insults and misgivings. Usually,...

No wonder people have a dim view of the investment management business. This book is set to be published in a month - "The Wolf of Wall Street". It is written by Jordan Belfort, a broker that sold worthless stocks to thousands of unsuspecting investors at Stratton Oakmont brokerage in the 1990s. Investors lost at least...

I had a post awhile back that focused on a new CEF that invests in cat bonds (HNW). On the same topic, Michael Lewis has a good article in The New York Times Magazine titled, "In Nature's Casino". Well worth the read.There is also a new blog that hit my radar screen today, and if the first...

From AlphaLetters, two more great quant working paper reviews:Article 8.Category: Calendar anomalies, weather anomalies, macro economic news announcementsTitle: The Arrival of Information and Stock Market AnomaliesAuthor: Jeffrey R. GerlachSource: College of William and Mary working paperLink: http://jrgerl.people.wm.edu/calendar%20anomaly.pdf Summary:This paper studies the relationship between macroeconomic news announcements and six stock market calendar/weather anomalies (the turn-of-the-month, monthly, rainfall, temperature, holiday and...

Here are two behavioral downloads:Applying Behavioral Finance to Value Investing - Whitney TilsonBehavioural Finance - Martin SewellDaniel Kahneman, from an interview with Money Magazine:Q. You once said we'd all be better investors if we just made fewer decisions.A. Two decisions really matter: how much of your wealth you want to put at risk and how much risk you want...

So the next time I write an academic paper, it will have a short title, few footnotes or equations, no appendix, and be reeaallly long. (Ok, that applied to law articles and few investment papers could get away with no equations.)Full article from the Freaknomics blog, "Attack of the Supercrunchers".I just ordered this new book on data mining, "Super...

I love to look through 13F filings of hedge funds that place all of their holdings in a few stocks. That is true belief that the best ideas are in a concentrated portfolio.World Beta has examined other such managers before - Saddle Rock being one of them. Her top holdings currently are American Eagle (AEO), Abercrombie (ANF),...

"Knowledge is good" - Emil Faber, founder of Faber CollegeWhile I have no idea how my namesake college endowment is performing these days, Harvard Management Company just released their fiscal year 2007 results, and they are fantastic. From the article:The Harvard endowment grew 23 percent during the fiscal year, which ended June 30, swelling to a new high...