Don’t anthropomorphize markets

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Nov 9, 2010 in Best of the Blog, Blog | 0 comments For today’s post I wanted to decry a financial markets press tactic that is as old as the markets themselves.  Namely, the media love to anthropomorphize markets, especially the stock market.  In other words, this is the tendency of reporters to ascribe human behavior to the price gyrations of stocks. Here is an example from today’s Wall Street Journal: “U.S. stocks wavered as...
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The power of creative destruction, baby!

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Oct 4, 2010 in Best of the Blog, Blog | 0 comments One of the first topics I covered on the blog at its inception almost two years ago was the power of capitalism’s “creative destruction.”  What the heck is that?  It is economist Joseph Schumpeter’s concept that capitalist economies are in a constant state of life-extending evolution.  New ideas lead to new businesses and new products and new consumer choices, or if you...
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Safer bank standards

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Sep 13, 2010 in Best of the Blog, Blog | 11 comments Over the weekend it was announced that global banking regulators had finally agree to new capital standards for banks.  The standards were coordinated by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision.  In short, banks are going to be required to have more capital (read: equity) on hand relative to the amount of leverage (read: debt and other investments) on their balance sheets. These new...
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A game of chicken

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Jul 20, 2010 in Best of the Blog, Blog | 3 comments Much start-stop strangeness is happening in the stock markets.  Ostensibly this is due to companies reporting earnings that either exceed or are in line with expectations; yet whose revenues fail to excite.  This is the very same issue I wrote about over a year ago as the U.S. economy started to recover.  See my post on “operating leverage” for the full story. Companies can...
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Finally a financial overhaul bill

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Jun 25, 2010 in Best of the Blog, Blog | 1 comment The big news this morning, and perhaps the biggest news since I started publishing the blog, is that a financial industry overhaul bill has finally been readied for Congress to vote on.  I began the blog sending out a mini-manifesto to the e-ethers calling for reform of the financial industry.  A bill has finally been negotiated between the Senate and the House; passage is expected some time...
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Fear of fear is generating fear

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on May 16, 2010 in Best of the Blog, Blog | 1 comment Open question to investors: What’re you doing liquidating U.S. stocks and going to cash? Open rebuttal to such thinking: You invest because you want to first, preserve capital, but second and more powerful, you want to make money.  Where else besides the U.S. financial markets are you going to get access to innovative companies generating excess returns; a generally solid and honest...
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Understanding information with will power is the key to crisis evasion

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on May 10, 2010 in Best of the Blog, Blog | 0 comments Back in October 2008 in the first days of the blog and in the midst of a Second Great Depression talk, I wrote a post in which I said such an event was highly unlikely.  Among the reasons I gave for this were the: greater understanding of both fiscal and monetary policy increased speed of data reporting, and increased transparency of data collection All three of these address the greatest...
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