Personal note: Sorry for the long delay from posting. I had a death in the family this summer, a big overseas family wedding, and I’ve been working on getting my newsletter released, which I’ll announce in a later post. Now, I’m back. I was thinking this morning that with the Read more…
The world of quantitative finance is never boring. At least not from the research perspective. Today I want to explore some new research from one of the top quant shops on the small company effect and see how an investor can apply it simply to an existing quant approach. Specifically, Read more…
Today I wanted to talk about the forecasting of future returns and more importantly what implications future returns have for SWRs (Safe Withdrawal Rates). As I showed in my last post, the first 10 year period real return in retirement is the best predictor of SWRs for 30 year retirement Read more…
Just wanted to update the January effect results for the MLP sector. As I noted in previous posts January tends to be the best performing month for the MLP sector. January 2013 ended up being the 2nd best January for MLPs ever, with a total return of 12.6% Here is Read more…
Aflac (AFL) is currently one of my favorite undervalued dividend stocks. I’ve mentioned it briefly in two prior posts (here and here). The company’s core business is strong and has great growth prospects. The current market environment has it quite undervalued and thus presents a great opportunity for patient long Read more…
Value investing seems easy when you first approach it. Buy stocks that are undervalued and wait until they return to at least fair value. Finding those stocks that are cheap is also pretty easy. Pick your favorite ratio, arm yourself with a stock screener, and you can easily find a Read more…
For my first post back from my break, I’d like to focus on the valuation of one of my favorite sectors, MLPs. I’ve posted on MLPs many times before (see here for a list of posts) and my largest single stock position for years has been Enterprise Products (EPD). Bottom Read more…
It’s a good time to update the valuation for one of my favorite sectors for income investors and retirees, MLPs. MLPs had another great year in 2011, especially during Q4. The sector returned 14% for the year vs 2% for the SP500. I’ll spare everyone the suspense buildup of the Read more…
I don’t know why I feel the need to do an outlook post. I don’t pay any attention to market forecasts. I don’t invest in indexes. So, why the need for an outlook post? Well, over the years I have to come to the opinion that it is quite helpful Read more…
Today I wanted to touch on another common behavioral issue that most investors fall prey to, anchoring. I’ve commented previously on the behavior gap, how behavioral issues lead to investor under performance and specifically how more information often leads to worse investment performance. Anchoring is another behavioral pitfall for investors. Read more…
Well, the MLP correction I discussed earlier seems to have run its course for now. I thought this would be a good time to see what this correction has done for MLP valuations relative to history. I last did this back at the end of Q1 2011 and was planning Read more…