Most Recent Stingy News
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| Covered calls: a devil's bargain |
| 09/22/25 1:38 PM EST | Funds |
| "The idea that covered calls generate income is financial bs. These strategies are mechanically expected to underperform their underlying equity, and increasingly so at higher targeted levels of distributions. For long-term investors, covered calls increase risk by leaving the downside unprotected while the capping upside, eliminating the mean-reverting behavior of stocks - an important feature of stock returns." [video] |
| More Funds: There Ain't No Such Thing as a Free Lunch |
| The illiquidity premium |
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| The 60/40 portfolio: a 150-year test |
| 09/21/25 6:02 PM EST | Markets |
| "It took the worst bond market in history to make investing in a 60/40 more painful during a market crash than holding all equities." |
| More Markets: Crowding into quality |
| Total concentration |
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| Crowding into quality |
| 09/21/25 6:01 PM EST | Markets |
| "Similar to Coca Cola's stock in the 1990s, Walmart shareholders appear to be pricing in very strong growth and a nearly flawless future. While Walmart's earnings have grown during this cycle, the pace has been slow to moderateâ€"exactly what we'd expect from a massive retailer. Like many mature market leaders we follow, its earnings growth has largely tracked nominal GDP. While there's nothing wrong with expanding alongside the economy, we believe Walmart's current valuation demands much stronger growth." |
| More Markets: Total concentration |
| The illusion of compound returns |
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| Total concentration |
| 09/21/25 6:00 PM EST | Markets |
| "Based on the evidence from logic, math, and historical data, we believe the benefits of diversification stand on their own merits. And when the outcomes of diversified portfolios are compared against their hyper-concentrated peers, free from survivorship bias, it seems the case for diversification is self-evident." |
| More Markets: The illusion of compound returns |
| Capex cycles |
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| Retirees spend income, not savings |
| 09/21/25 5:06 PM EST | Retirement |
| "Prior studies find that retirees spend less from savings than life cycle models predict. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, we explore how lifetime income, wage income, capital income, qualified savings, and nonqualified savings are used to fund retirement spending. We find that retirees spend far more from lifetime income than other categories of wealth. Approximately 80% of lifetime income is consumed, on average, versus only approximately half of other available savings and income sources." |
| More Retirement: Risky business |
| Does the 4 per cent rule still apply? |
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| Driverless taxis records |
| 09/21/25 5:04 PM EST | Tech |
| "Trips stayed under half a million miles per month until mid-2024. But since then, growth has taken off. Within a year, usage multiplied eightfold, climbing past four million miles by May 2025, the latest data available." |
| More Tech: Waymos crash less than humans |
| The algorithms are broken |
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| The illusion of compound returns |
| 09/12/25 5:12 PM EST | Markets |
| "Compounding is the King Kong of wealth creation, but it can be defeated by the Godzilla of limited capacity. Very successful investors, such as Warren Buffett of Berkshire or Jim Simons of Renaissance, eventually run into capacity constraints, and become unable to compound their wealth at high rates of return. Capacity always wins in the end." |
| More Markets: Capex cycles |
| Europe's small-cap golden age |
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| Intelligent concentration |
| 09/12/25 4:17 PM EST | Buffett |
| "Warren Buffett's diversification practices have been back in the spotlight over the past few years. Specifically, the level of concentration in his portfolio has come under scrutiny due to the size of the largest stock holding in Berkshire Hathaway's marketable equities portfolio. A historical review of Buffett's implementation of diversification and concentration in practice, as well as his perspective on these concepts, documents a long tradition of heterodox thinking and application. " |
| More Buffett: Berkshire Hathaway 2025 AGM |
| Cash |
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| Capex cycles |
| 09/12/25 4:15 PM EST | Markets |
| "Both Info Tech and Utilities are at the extreme end of their historical range of capital intensity, with Info Tech rivaling its peak in the dot-com era. ... We do not know what the ROI on the current capex cycle will be, but we have a sneaking suspicion that the management teams deploying hundreds of billions of dollars in pursuit of AGI don't know either. In this case, the best we can do is use history as our guide, and on that account the prospects for the current capital investment cycle should concern investors." |
| More Markets: Europe's small-cap golden age |
| What I learned from COVID |
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| Europe's small-cap golden age |
| 09/12/25 4:14 PM EST | Markets |
| "A paradox of the tariffs imposed by the United States this year is that, while they are filling the coffers of the US Treasury, the stock market winners thus far appear be international firms. ... Looking within Europe, we can see that the biggest gains have been among the continent's domestically oriented firms, which earn almost all of their revenue in Europe." |
| More Markets: What I learned from COVID |
| Why aren't markets freaking out? |
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| What I learned from COVID |
| 09/12/25 4:13 PM EST | Markets |
| "I'm not saying that the U.S. stock market is currently a screaming buy. Perhaps the skeptics are correct and the market is like Wile E. Coyote looking down into the abyss. That's what I thought in 2020, but I was mistaken. The market was not Wile E. Coyote. The market was the Road Runner, who paused briefly, looked at COVID, and then sped away. Meep meep. It's not the economy, stupid. It's the stock market, and it does its own thing." |
| More Markets: Why aren't markets freaking out? |
| Bearish on U.S. Stocks |
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| The condo crash |
| 08/30/25 1:15 PM EST | Real Estate |
| "For years, low interest rates fuelled a big-city condo-flipping frenzy. Profits got bigger and condos got smaller. Now the bubble has popped, leaving behind thousands of unsellable, unlivable units." |
| More Real Estate: Bad news for the homebuyers |
| The bull case for housing |
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| Why aren't markets freaking out? |
| 08/30/25 1:09 PM EST | Markets |
| "Whatever happens, Trump's campaign to take over monetary policy has shifted from a public pressure to personal intimidation of Fed officials: the attack on Cook signals that Trump and his people will try to ruin the life of anyone who stands in his way. There is now a substantial chance that the Fed's independence, its ability to manage the nation's monetary policy on an objective, technocratic basis rather than as an instrument of the president's political interests and personal whims, will soon be gone." |
| More Markets: Bearish on U.S. Stocks |
| Time to dump US stocks |
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| Bearish on U.S. Stocks |
| 08/30/25 1:05 PM EST | Markets |
| "the P/S ratio of the S&P 500 hit an all-time high of 3.41 during the peak of the DotCom Bubble in December 1999. It hit another relative high of 2.98 in December 2021. And it's at around 3.2 today. I understand the flaws with such valuation metrics. I've written about them before. But I'm not arguing that the P/S ratio needs to return to its long-term market average of ~1.2 (or anything like that). I'm arguing that, historically, the market's P/S ratio hasn't stayed above 3 for any extended period of time." |
| More Markets: Time to dump US stocks |
| Drawdowns and serial correlation |
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| Risky business |
| 08/30/25 1:01 PM EST | Retirement |
| "In looking at the full set of asset allocation options, Bengen found there to be an optimal range: Allocating between 45% and 75% of a portfolio to stocks led to the highest long-term sustainable withdrawal rates. Why? Allocations below 45% caused portfolios to lag behind inflation. Allocations over 75%, on the other hand, ran into trouble because they couldn't recover from deep market downturns. But between 45% and 75%, Bengen found that an initial portfolio withdrawal rate of close to 5% would have been sustainable throughout a 30-year retirement." |
| More Retirement: Does the 4 per cent rule still apply? |
| Financial independence is overrated |
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| Time to dump US stocks |
| 08/18/25 4:38 PM EST | Markets |
| "Like Malibu Barbie, America has always promised an endless summer of affluence and good times. The rule of law, a resilient democracy, and a dynamic business culture, together with the tailwinds of globalization and the world's reserve currency, have generated immense wealth for generations of Americans and foreign investors alike. Despite its past and current challenges, America is deemed "too big to fail". Yet, it pays to pay attention: the citizens of Rome and passengers on the Titanic probably felt the same way. Students of history may conclude that it's better to leave the party too early than stay too long." |
| More Markets: Drawdowns and serial correlation |
| Ignore the margin debt alarm |
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| Stagflation: shooting the messengers |
| 08/18/25 4:36 PM EST | Economics |
| "Sure enough, the jobs data released two weeks ago point to a significant economic slowdown, while the two inflation reports released this week - on consumer and producer prices - show clear fingerprints of the effects of tariffs on prices. To be clear, what we're looking at so far is probably a 1 or 2 point rise in inflation and a moderate rise in unemployment that might not be enough to be considered a recession." |
| More Economics: The Jevons paradox |
| Good in theory |
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| I Used to Be Cool |
| 08/18/25 4:33 PM EST | Dividends |
| "With stock buybacks and mega-cap investing soaring in popularity, we believe certain small-cap dividend stocks are being overlooked. We are grateful. While we don't know when they'll come back into favor, we're happy to collect their dividends while we wait. And who knows, if the Fed chickens out (F.A.C.O.) and cuts rates, investors may return to dividend-paying stocks sooner than expected. Regardless, we're not waiting for investor perceptions and allocations to change. We still think dividends are cool." |
| More Dividends: The case for and against dividend ETFs |
| Volatility, dividend yield and stock returns |
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| Drawdowns and serial correlation |
| 08/18/25 4:30 PM EST | Markets |
| "There's a common belief that the main threat to your wealth is a huge one-day or one-month crash, a left-skewed 'tail event' that will destroy your wealth in the blink of an eye. That outcome happens sometimes, but it's not how the world usually works. Usually, disaster manifests as a sequence of bad days that sum up to a sequence of bad months, as opposed to one gigantic bad day. Your main concern should be a slow bleed, not sudden death." |
| More Markets: Ignore the margin debt alarm |
| No country for short sellers |
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| There Ain't No Such Thing as a Free Lunch |
| 08/18/25 4:28 PM EST | Funds |
| "Buffer funds by and large have sold investors the promise of comfort, cloaked in complexity, at the cost of risk-adjusted returns. Our paper shows there are simpler, less expensive, and more effective ways to deal with the risk of equity markets. Once again, Robert Heinlein and his TANSTAAFL, provides investors more value than a (growing) slice of our industry." |
| More Funds: The illiquidity premium |
| Covered call strategies don't shine |
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| Ignore the margin debt alarm |
| 08/18/25 4:25 PM EST | Markets |
| "Yes, leverage matters. But earnings, interest rates, liquidity, and sentiment matter more. Margin debt is part of the story, not the story. So the next time you see a chart of rising margin balances used to forecast a crash, remember this: margin debt reflects where we are, not where we're going." |
| More Markets: No country for short sellers |
| The best and worst style factors since 1975 |
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