Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
People are leaving California and the once golden land has begun to decay. [h/t Intapundit] What happened?
“We’ve lived off the investments our parents made in the ’50s and ’60s for a long time,” says Tim Hodson, director of the Center for California Studies at California State University, Sacramento. “We’re somewhat in the position of a Rust Belt state in the 1970s.”
California has followed the grim path of the Great Lakes states.
In the “efficient markets” hypothesis, all available information is factored into the stock price, making attempts to “beat the market” by selecting your own stocks a fool’s errand. Index funds, which were originally stock mutual funds, such as those at Vanguard, not only attempt to mimic rather than beat the index, they also sport much lower expenses. Thus even if the performance was the same for an index as a stock picker, the index would win with costs as low as 0.2% / year as opposed to 1% – 2% / year for managed funds. One advantage that remained of a stock selection methodology over mutual funds was related to taxes – individual stocks were definitely more tax efficient if handled correctly; now index ETF’s have erased that lead.
Of course, theories don’t always work in the real world, as the recent financial meltdown attests, when AAA rated financial instruments took significant losses. In a similar vein, those in favor of active stock selection could always point to a few candidates to make their cases. One candidate was Bill Miller, head of the Legg Mason Value Trust, who beat the S&P 500 for 15 consecutive years.
While Bill Miller may have been the “poster boy” for those that point to active stock pickers, he was a reticent candidate. He even said that a lot of his “streak” was due to timing on the calendar and didn’t strut around like a world-beater. Thus I didn’t take much pleasure in the this article…
Bill Miller, whose Legg Mason Value Trust achieved the unlikely feat of beating the S&P 500-stock index for 15 consecutive years, has become the fund world’s punching bag. So far this year, the fund is down a devastating 56 percent on account of bad bets on stocks including AIG, Washington Mutual, and Freddie Mac. This horrific year (combined with lackluster results in 2006 and 2007) has banished Legg Mason’s crown jewel to the ranks of the worst-performing mutual funds not only for the year, but for all standard periods of measurement.
I am usually loathe to recommend anything remotely related to the NY Times or even link there*, but the Freakonomics Blog is very good reading, and the comments are usually very civil, intelligent and interesting.
*My main reasons are the terrible editorial pages and the fact that they will not renounce the Duranty Pulitzer.
A recent article focused on satellite radio and the merger of XM and Sirius. In an interview with CEO Mel Karmazin, he said:
Ironically, one rationale for the merger was the expectation that the combined company could borrow money more cheaply. “The bankers who covered the deal believed that one of the synergies of the merger was the ability to refinance at a lower level,” says Mr. Karmazin. Consider this: five years ago, Sirius, with 300,000 subscribers and no hint that Mr. Stern would be gracing its channel lineup, borrowed money at 2.5 percent interest. Those days are long gone. “Warren Buffett managed to get a 10 percent coupon from G.E. and Goldman Sachs,” says Mr. Karmazin, speaking of the interest rate that Mr. Buffett, the Omaha investing legend, was promised for his recent investments in both companies. “So if you are Sirius XM, what should the coupon be?”
Thus the Sirius / XM stock ticker, which peaked at $9 in 2005, now trades at 12 cents. Approximately $3B in debt is outstanding for the company; since they are not cash flow positive to any significant degree and raising money through stock offerings is extremely difficult when you are a penny stock, their balance sheet is killing the company, and possibly the entire satellite radio industry as a result.
A recent NY Times article highlighted the impact of the financial crisis on Ireland, a country which had previously been riding high on a property boom (and also low tax rates and generally sound economic policies).
There is a photo of a property tycoon and his lovely wife (recently married), 20 years his junior, above. From the article:
The Celtic Tiger my be dead and if the banking crisis continues I could be considered insolvent. but the one thing that I have is my wife and children – and they can’t take that away from me
No, Mr. Tycoon, THEY can’t take her away from you, but your real risk is that she’ll leave on her own.