Investing is not for the faint of heart. Neither is it for the psychotic risk taker. Investing requires balance, rationality and a good deal of detached and independent thinking. So don’t listen to me. Figure it out for yourselves. Here are a few common declarations by investors and a few (loaded) questions they should ask.
We [...]

Capitalism is bad at fiscal policy. Capitalism is also bad at monetary policy but that’s less apparent. You cannot hear a loud hum but you can hear a small bang.
I often wonder how effective central bank policy is at maintaining economic stability and price stability. Unfortunately I cannot observe comparable economies of size and complexity [...]

 
One way of measuring correlations between managers is to look at cross sectional standard deviations of returns, i.e. the dispersion of returns, between different hedge fund strategies.
Here is what raw dispersion looks like across the HFRI strategy indices:

Disperson is fairly stable in a range except for the 1999/200 equity bubble bursting and the 2008 cerdit crisis. [...]

 
The credit quality of sovereign debt is the subject of current scrutiny and debate.
The business of government is a complex one with multiple objectives and indeed philosophies.
Some believe that governments are inherently inefficient and therefore should have their mandate clearly defined and limited. Others see government as an arbiter that corrects market imperfections.
Unable to deal [...]

Want to find the best job in the world? Here’s how to think about it.
You want a job with maximum return to your skills as possible. You therefore want maximum return on equity, per person, in your job or field.
You really couldn’t give a toss what the return on assets is. Return on assets has [...]

Its not fundamentals that are driving equity markets and responsible for the current weakness. Fundamentals were bound to weaken once the first round of inventory restocking had taken place and the benefits of cost cutting had been realized. The world economy is still weak, but in a recovery phase, and conditions have returned to normal, [...]

 
Debt levels as a percentage of GDP:

Having attended various lectures by academics, regulators, central bankers and investors in the opening weeks of 2010, and being surprised at the diversity of views among the experts, I thought to look back at the 2008 credit crisis in a bit more detail to see what I missed. I tried to look back at the [...]

The equity markets have been weak on the sovereign risk scares in Greece, Spain and Portugal. As much as this, employment numbers in the US have now come in below forecast in the last 4 weeks.
People out of work tend to stop their efforts in December as the year comes to a close because they [...]

The US owes China 1 trillion bucks. Is it any surprise that China wants a stronger USD?
The US government is broke.
China cannot buy CDS protection on the US. It would have to buy it from a strong credit. Which counterparty could write 1 trillion USD worth of protection? Well, China, but that’s stupid. The EU? China [...]