Equities and Alchemy

Equities and Alchemy


Jobs, financial markets, marketing, macroeconomics, individual investors, corporate criminals,
predatory financiers, market manipulation,
equities and alchemy

Buyer Beware

October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. Other dangerous months are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August and February.
- Mark Twain

12/12/22

Howard Marks on Getting the Odds in Your Side | Must watch for Young Investors





Howard Marks on Getting the Odds in Your Side | Must watch for Young Investors 

https://youtu.be/LIEi4PjfFv4

Howard Stanley Marks (born April 23, 1946) is an American investor and writer. He is the co-founder and co-chairman of Oaktree Capital Management, the largest investor in distressed securities worldwide. In 2020, with a net worth of $2.1 billion, Marks was ranked No. 391 on the Forbes 400 rankings of the wealthiest Americans.

Marks is admired in the investment community for his "memos", which detail his investment strategies and insight into the economy and are posted publicly on the Oaktree website. He has also published 3 books on investing. According to Warren Buffett, "When I see memos from Howard Marks in my mail, they're the first thing I open and read. I always learn something, and that goes double for his book."

Marks focuses on risk management and says that investors should set investment strategy according to their personal situations and ask themselves whether they worry more about the risk of losing money or the risk of missing an opportunity. Marks believes that it is hard to gain an investment advantage through research since so many smart people are doing it already; the ways to get an advantage are through better inferring the consequences implied by current company data, managing the psychology of investing, and assessing the present stage of the business /market cycle. He hopes to have average returns during a bull market, while minimizing losses during bear markets due to his belief that losses do more harm than any benefit investors obtain from gains. Marks does favor using market timing strategies to have cash available to be invested during a downturn.Marks notes that it is important for investors to admit what they don't know instead of believing something is certain. He aims for a "high batting average" over "home runs".

Funds led by Marks have produced long term returns net of fees of 19% per year. Investors are primarily pension funds and sovereign wealth funds.

Citicorp...

From 1969 until 1978, Marks worked at Citicorp, first as an equity research analyst and then as the company's Director of Research. From 1978 to 1985, he served as a Vice President, as well as a senior portfolio manager overseeing convertible and high-yield debt. Citibank allowed him to move to Los Angeles in 1980.

TCW Group...

In 1985, Marks joined TCW Group where he led the groups that were responsible for investments in high-yield debt and convertible securities, and in 1988 he and Bruce Karsh organized one of the first distressed debt funds from a major financial institution. In 1995, he, Karsh, and 3 others decided to leave to start their own firm and petitioned TCW to let them continue managing the funds they managed at TCW, giving TCW a portion of the management fees; when TCW refused, the 5 partners left the company and founded Oaktree Capital Management in Los Angeles.

Oaktree...

After being founded in 1995, Oaktree grew rapidly, focusing on high-yield debt, distressed debt, and private equity.

During the financial crisis of 2007–08, Oaktree raised $10.9 billion, the largest distressed debt fund in history, to buy distressed assets, which "paid off richly for his investors".

In April 2012, Oaktree became a public company via an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange, raising $380 million by selling 8.84 million shares for $43 each.

In March 2019, Brookfield Asset Management acquired 62% of Oaktree. Marks and other members of Oaktree own 38% of the company and have full control of Oaktree's day-to-day operations.
Transcript
Follow along using the transcript.






9/30/22













Ludwig von Mises, Economist, Author and Teacher, Dies at 92



By Leonard SilkOct. 11, 1973

About the Archive
This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.
Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.


Ludwig von Mises, one of the Foremost economists of this century, died yesterday in St. Vincent's Hospital at the age of 92. He lived at 777 West End Avenue.

Professor von Mises was best known in this country as a champion of libertarian economics — the doctine that regards with intense suspicion any intervention in the economy by government. He was recognized as a brilliant contributor to economic thought not only by his disciples but also by many who disagreed radically with his political and social philosophy, such as the outstanding socialist economist, Oskar Lange.

He acquired his first recognition for his “Theory of Money and Credit,” published in German in 1912. In that work he was the first to develop the theory of subjective value to explain the demand for cash balances as a basis for expansions and contractions in economic activity.

Stressing the causal role of individual human decisions, Professor von Mises observed that changes in the amount of cash individuals want to hold would cause expansions and contractions in the volume of money and credit.



Developed, Cyclical View

He went on to develop a complete theory of the business cycle resulting from the expansion and contraction of the money supply. Booms, he said, resulted from the expansion of fiduciary bank credit, which inflated the money supply and artificially lowered interest rates. This in turn led to overinvestment, which set the economy up for a slump. Depression would follow as the expansion of the money supply was brought to a halt—either because the banking system encountered a limit of reserves or because the monetary authorities clamped down on further credit expansion.

In 1922, Professor von Mises set forth his critique of collectivist economics in “Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis.” The work was to have a major impact on socialist thinking.

He presented the challenging argument that rational economic organization was logically impossible in the absence of free markets. Hence, he contended, socialism was bound to wallow in inefficiency, because it lacked correct market prices on which to base decisions about what to produce and how to produce it.

Although they regarded his views as too extreme, such socialist economists as Oskar Lange in Poland and Abba P. Lerner in England took Professor von Mises's strictures seriously, and set out to construct a theory of socialism based on simulated markets—“playing the game of competition.” Professor Lange, who spent some years at the University of Chicago and returned to Communist Poland after World War H, once declared that “in front of every Socialist ministry of planning there should be a statue of Ludwig von Mises.”

It was not until the nineteensixties that the Soviet Union and other Communist countries began to take seriously the need for developing the market as a tool for rational planning and allocation of goods and resources.



Professor von Mises, however, regarded such socialist efforts at imitating the market—“planning not to plan”—as doomed to failure. “Unfortunately,” he wrote, “it is not possible to divorce the market ... from the working of a society which is based on private property in the means of production.” Without the striving of entrepreneurs for profit, of landlords for rent, of capitalists for interest and of workers for wages, the system could not succeed, he contended.

A Brilliant Teacher

The economist was regarded as a brilliant teacher. His students, at the University of Vienna and in his informal Wiener Kreis (Vienna circle), numbered many who were to go on to fame of their own as economists and philosophers. His students included Fritz Machlup, Gottfried von Haberler, Fredirch Hayek, Gerhard Tintner, Oskar Mogenstern, Ilse Mintz, Rudolf Carnap and Karl Popper.

Professor von Mises was credited with helping to revive respect for free‐market economics in Europe (he was considered by some the intellectual godfather of the German postwar “economic miracle”). His views are held in high regard at the American capital of libertarian economics, the University of Chicago, whose most famous resident scholar is Prof. Milton Friedman.

The economist was born in Lemberg, Austria, on Sept. 29, 1881. He left his professorship at the University of Vienna as the Nazi tide approached Austria, and became Professor of International Economic Relations at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva. He came to the United States in 1940 and became a citizen in 1946. He was a founder of the Mont Pelerin Society, a group of like‐minded economists; a member of the faculty of New York University from 1945 to 1969, and the author of 19 books.

Surviving is his widow, Margit.

The service will be held at noon Tuesday in the Universal Funeral Chapel, Lexington Avenue and 52d Street.







9/15/22

Short Selling

 

Short Selling: 

“The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” 


This is the danger in seeing stocks as over valued.


9/13/22

Charlie Munger Predicts a Horrible Economic Crisis Where EVERYTHING WILL...






https://youtu.be/v5UCmsXpngA


Charlie Munger warns about the biggest inflationary bubble in world history bursting and shares his thoughts on how it is going to unfold.

He elaborates on the difficulty of building wealth for the young generation of today compared to his. Charlie says that we’re flirting with serious trouble and the consequences may be worse than what Paul Volcker was dealing with in the 1970s. Being a vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and the closest partner (right hand man) of Warren Buffett, Charles T. Munger has a net worth of around $2 billion. He is a profoundly wise man who is absolutely worth listening to, especially when it comes to investing, the psychology of wealthy people, rationality, and life experience. Share this video with a friend if you find it useful! Consider subscribing to the channel for videos about investing, business, stock market, managing money, building wealth, passive income, and other finance-related content! -------------------------------------------------- Yahoo Finance https://www.youtube.com/c/YahooFinance Becky Quick & CNBC https://www.youtube.com/c/CNBCtelevision 🎥 We own commercial licenses for all the content used in this video except parts about the topic that have been used under fair use and it was fully edited by us. For any concerns, business inquiries, etc. please contact us via email in the “About” section of the channel.
Charlie Munger Predicts a Horrible Economic Crisis Where EVERYTHING WILL COLLAPSE




8/13/22

Inside the Research Engine: Energy, Climate, and Geopolitics with Daniel Yergin




Pulitzer Prize-winning author Daniel Yergin joins Co-CIO for Sustainability Karen Karniol-Tambour and our investment team for a conversation on the green energy transition, the key dynamics driving energy markets, and how the politics of energy are impacting international relations.



Energy, Climate, and Geopolitics with Daniel Yergin

https://youtu.be/9VenfPwVtoU




8/12/22

End of an Era: Russia’s Grip on Oil is Dwindling, Says Daniel Yergin





End of an Era: Russia’s Grip on Oil is Dwindling, Says Daniel Yergin  


As the West continues to levy economic sanctions on Russia, President Zelensky has renewed calls for an embargo on Russian oil. Daniel Yergin, author of "The New Map," is a leading authority on energy and the global economy. He joins Walter Isaacson to analyze how this war has impacted reliance on Russian energy.

Originally aired on April 12, 2022.



https://youtu.be/Zh4cm3mWgHc





Russia's Days as Energy Superpower Are Over, Yergin Says





Russia's Days as Energy Superpower Are Over, Yergin Says

S&P Global Vice Chairman Daniel Yergin discusses the impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on energy markets, and calls by Congressional Democrats for a windfall-profits tax on oil companies. 

He speaks with Bloomberg's David Westin on "Balance of Power."

https://youtu.be/MObUCf5YHjc




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Jennifer believes we live in the garden of Eden and I believe that we are destroying it. Our saving grace is within ourselves, our faith, and our mindfulness. We need to make a conscious effort to respect and preserve all life.