Man vs. Wild
Is a great show. And I like Bear. But why the 7% pop yesterday for DISCA on no news and heavy volume? I profiled Blue Ridge Capital the other day, and DISCA is one of Griffin's top holdings. Other funds that hold DISCA are:Zebra Capital ,portfolio here (Ibbotson & Chen's quant fund)Southeastern Asset Management,...
Factor Based Models
I like to use Portfolio123 for my quant based stock models. It is cheap compared to the likes of Factset, and easy to use. The biggest drawbacks are the limited database, which only goes back to 2001, and the inability to build short models.The main model I track has about 25 factors, including measures of valuation, momentum,...
AlphaLetters Weekly Paper Review #2 & #3
Below are two reviews from the guys at AlphaLetters:Article 1.Category: Mutual fund managers and corporate board member, education connectionTitle: The Small World of Investing: Board Connections and Mutual Fund ReturnsAuthor: Lauren Cohen, Andrea Frazzini and Christopher MalloySource: University of Chicago working paperLink: http://faculty.chicagogsb.edu/andrea.frazzini/pdf/w13121.pdfThis paper finds that portfolio managers tend to overweight stocks whose corporate board members share education network...
New Moon Today
O Mister MoonO Mister Moon, moon, bright and shiny moon,Won't you please shine down on me?O Mister Moon, moon, bright and shiny moon,Won't you please shine down on me?Here comes the farmer with a big shotgun!He's after me, and I can't run!O Mister Moon, moon, bright and shiny moon,Won't you please shine down on me?Is this a "butter in...
The Sushi Economy
On the plane back from Central America the other day I read a good article in Vanity Fair called "If You Knew Sushi". It details the worlds largest fish market - Tokyo's Tsukiji. Many investors can relate to this type of frenzied greed:Occasionally tuna mania overtakes an auction. Hiroyasu Ito, the president of Chuo Gyorui, the biggest...
Want to Invest in the Weather?
Alternative asset classes fascinate me. James Altucher does a good job covering the space, and even has a book on the subject (but James, please hire a graphic designer for your next cover!). For example, I had no idea there was a closed-end fund that invests in cat bonds - HNW (Anyone that has launched a...
Renaissance to Launch New $25B Managed Futures Fund
When the best hedge fund on the planet decides to launch a new fund, it bears watching. Even more interesting is the area Rentech has decided to pursue. The full press release is at the end of the post, and below are my comments as there seems to be a great deal of misunderstanding in the commodities...
The Market Portfolio
The market portfolio is a portfolio consisting of a weighted sum of every asset in the market, with weights in the proportions that they exist in the market.The concept of a market portfolio plays an important role in many financial theories and models, including the Capital Asset Pricing Model where it is the only fund in which investors need...
Invest Like John Griffin – Blue Ridge Capital
If you had to name the top 5 best hedge fund managers ever, Julian Robertson would certainly be on the list. (He's also from Salisbury, NC which is pretty close to where I grew up in Winston-Salem, and there is a book written about him titled, Julian Robertson: A Tiger in the Land of Bulls and Bears.)...
Gene Therapy Comes of Age?
I started out my undergraduate at the University of Virginia in Aerospace Engineering. After a year or so in that track (and a summer internship at Lockheed where all I did was play on the corporate softball team), I decided that aerospace was definitely not for me. (My childhood astronaut fantasies certainly were not the same as...
