General

“How’d this investment do last quarter?” Clear communication is critical to successful client-adviser relationships. And intuitive, easy-to-understand investment reporting ought to be central to that. Yet simple questions like the one above can be strangely difficult to answer. And that’s especially true in the world of alternative investments. The best way to understand some of […]

Stock Buybacks: The True Story. 2019. Edward Yardeni and Joseph Abbott. YRI Press (a division of Yardeni Research, Inc.). One question I, as an equity analyst, always asked company management publicly, sometimes even if I knew the answer, was about the status of announced buyback programs and how they were financed. To me, the action […]

An obscure economic indicator demands a reappraisal, both for its predictive value as well as its ironic origins in the old-style monetarism of Milton Friedman. Of all the fads of the 1980s, the meticulous money-supply targeting recommended by monetarist economists packed more of a jolt than boom boxes, big hair, and “E.T. phone home” combined. […]

If you’ve heard that putting your home on the market can be overwhelming—well, that’s an understatement. Moving is considered one of the top five most stressful life events, up there with the death of a loved one, job loss or serious illness. Home ownership is also the largest financial investment for many Canadians; whether you’re […]

Joachim Klement, CFA, will be presenting at the 73rd CFA Institute Annual Conference, which will be held 17–20 May 2020 in Atlanta. I rewatched the Orson Welles docudrama F for Fake the other day. The 1973 film is an exploration of what is fake and what is real in the art world. I was curious to see how it held […]

Panel discussions can be disappointing for both audience members and participants. Why do we so often feel let down by what we see and hear from these conference mainstays? The problem, it turns out, isn’t usually the panelists, it’s the moderator. I had coffee with Mark Bowden, a global authority on nonverbal communication and the author […]