Japan's Stealth Profit Boom

'The common rationalization is that American companies have been better managed than their Japanese equivalents and have grown profits faster.

'In our view, there is a small problem with this narrative: it’s wrong.'

mailchi.mp/verdadcap/japa…

“…a years-long sleepwalk to a kind of national leveraged buyout.”

@grantspub in its inimitable style

grantspub.com/mygrants/Viewa…

Over the lsat roughly three-year period of elevated inflation, oil and gold performed the best, in our opinion, with equities next. Copper generally had middling performance, TIPS delivered unsatisfying returns, and 10Y Treasurys were consistently the worst performer.…

We created a daily-updating index that tracks aggregate LTM revenue growth for all global public companies, weighted by USD revenue 1-year ago. The growth slowdown is quite striking...

TopTradersLive.com Andrew Beer Here is a chart from Dan Rasmussen doing the rounds on LinkedIn.

Over the last decade, bonds were favored for their ability to move opposite to stocks, but the inflation surge in 2022 showed us that this pattern breaks down when inflation exceeds 3%.

Historical insights…

Yes, but this is a bit misleading. Census reports that there are ~20K firms with >500 employees. Of these 12% are public. So far we're in line roughly with Torsten's calcs. BUT 55% of the total # of employees work in the 12% of companies that are public. <1% of companies are…

Interesting stat by Dan Rasmussen on the corporate debt + cash evolution over the years in Japan vs the US.

In the past 25 years, institutional asset managers have radically shifted their portfolios to owning as much as 40% of assets in illiquid private equity.

'There's nothing more overbought today than private equity,' said Dan Rasmussen Dan Rasmussen during the Hedgeye Investing…

Priced Risk and Asymmetric Volatility in the Cross-Section of Skewness (Engle, Mistry)

'Risk aversion manifests in individual stock skewness.

'Smaller, value, and highly levered firms and firms with poor credit ratings have more positive skewness.'

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

1 | New Paper: International Intangible Value
Can investors take advantage of cheaper foreign markets without compromising on growth and innovation?
😢International Stagnation
🐢Intangible Underinvestment
🏅Intangible Leaders
📈Factor Backtest
⚖️Foreign Dilemma

(h/t Meb Faber,…

Princeton endowment head says 40% allocation to PE was, in retrospect, not his best idea:

on.ft.com/3W5yJ33

Really enjoyed my conversation with Oliver Renick on the Schwab Network
schwabnetwork.com/video/expectat…

To survive the hard times that are fast approaching. investors should focus on hard assets, writes Daniel Rasmussen
wsj.com/finance/how-to…

From the always excellent Tyler Vanderweele at Harvard Center for Human Flourishing:
harvardpublichealth.org/policy-practic…

My review in the WSJ of the Missing Billionaires: An obscure mathematical formula may be the key to building and managing complex portfolios over time. wsj.com/finance/invest… via WSJ Books Section

My review in the WSJ of “How to Listen When Markets Speak” wsj.com/finance/how-to… via WSJ Books Section

Is now the time to put money into alternatives and private equity?

That’s the biggest mistake you can make right now, says Dan Rasmussen Dan Rasmussen. “That’s not safe. It’s the opposite of safe. That’s highly risky.”