Back in August, we wrote about how standard accounting treatment of stock-based compensation can mislead investors about the true economics of a business. As a brief recap– companies often issue stock to employees as part of their compensation. This has become quite popular in tech- land over the past 5 years as two things have...
We believe that a low-cost, passive investing strategy such as an S&P 500 index fund has a place in our industry – after all, for most retail investors who cannot invest the time, nor have the expertise, or the experience, then investing in a highly diversified ‘market’ portfolio is probably the best course of...
The war in Ukraine is creating serious human hardship and suffering not only in the region but around the world. And despite where your politics may land, we can probably all agree that a stock market sell-off is much less of a worry than what many people in Ukraine are currently dealing with. Without diminishing...
We hear many investors and commentators asking; is now a good time to invest? The market is falling, should we sell today and buy back when it’s fallen more? Put simply; no- one can answer those questions- don’t trust anyone who even tries to. There are simply too many external variables to even begin...
On March 17, 2020, we published an article titled Market Update: The World is Ending (Again…) in which we discussed the large (at the time) sell off in the market related to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. While the title of the article was purposely hyperbolic, the message we conveyed was simple and...
This is our third entry in a multi-part series on some of the common failings of generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). As a brief reminder, GAAP accounting is what you will find when you open most US publicly reported financial statements. These are the numbers commonly used to assess the financial health of a given...
This is our second entry in a multi-part series on some of the common failings of GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) when it comes to truly understanding the economics of a business. GAAP accounting is the accounting you will find if you open most US publicly reported financial statements. These are the numbers commonly used...
This will be the first in a series of articles covering a fundamentally important concept in equity investing: that there is a difference between reported accounting numbers and actual economic reality. GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) is the accounting you will find if you open most publicly reported financial statements. These are the numbers commonly...
We wrote back in November about the risks posed to Western investors by the Chinese VIE (Variable Interest Entity) structure. Following recent announcements by the Chinese regulator, we believe those risks have just increased, so we thought it best to revisit the issue and provide an update. For those unfamiliar with the VIE structure, please...
Over the past few weeks, you will likely have noticed increased mentions of inflation in the news. The March print for CPI (average price of consumer goods and services) came in rather high: +4.2% year-over-year. This is after many, many years of persistently low inflation. How concerning is this? Despite the markets knee jerk...
