Debentures and Collateral

In Disney’s 1997 cartoon adaptation of the Greek legend of Hercules, the evil Hades says to his kindhearted-but-enslaved underling, “Meg, Meg, Meg, my sweet deluded little minion. Aren’t we forgetting one teensy-weensy, but ever so crucial little, tiny detail?”...

The First Principle of Investment

The term value is frequently misused. Dollar-store advertisers use it to mean that even though something is complete garbage, at least it’s cheap garbage. Portfolio managers use the term “value” to mean an underpriced-but-valuable asset. That’s better, but also...

Understanding Industry Rivalry

Michael Porter, a well-known strategy professor at Harvard identified five forces that shape the profit-making potential of the average firm in the industry. The five forces are: rivalry, buyer power, supplier power, threat of new entrants, and the threat of...

5 Lessons from The Big Short

In 2010, financial journalist Michael Lewis published a book telling the story of investors who made money in the 2007-2010 crash by betting against the mortgages we now know were doomed. He called it The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. On 11 December 2015,...