Welcome to the end of the week and another edition of Happy Hour! Just sit back, relax, and enjoy your end of the week roundup of all things interesting in the land of  money.

QE Hints

It’s the most anticipated event in years. When is it? How will it happen? What are the consequences? The idea that anything financial lasts forever usually gets people in trouble. While we all have our views of QE infinity or unending QE, I hope you didn’t take it literally. I vaguely remember folks believing the same with housing prices and dot-com stocks. But I digress. Continue Reading…

Welcome to the end of the week and another edition of Happy Hour! Just sit back, relax, and enjoy your end of the week roundup of all things interesting in the land of  money.

BRK Annual Meeting

Omaha filled its tourist quota last weekend with the highly anticipated Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. It’s like a value investors theme park vacation with all the excitement and hoopla without roller coasters.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a BRK annual meeting without some Buffett and Munger highlights and general investing perspective. Out of all the information available, I came across three that summed it up the best. The first is a transcript of the Q&A session from Valuewalk. It’s worth the read just for the Munger quips. The second is a collection of takeaways and impressions from the meeting by other investors. The last is included below. Continue Reading…

Welcome to the end of the week and another edition of Happy Hour! Just sit back, relax, and enjoy your end of the week roundup of all things interesting in the land of  money.

Apple Bonds

The big Apple bond offering hit this week and keeping with recent tradition it was big news. The bond offering involved a strategy to borrow money mostly at rates below inflation to buyback stock. This was on top of the dividend raise announcement. It seemed to be more about short-term shareholder appeasement. But it worked. And the overall cost of the debt is minimal compared to the company’s earning ability. Continue Reading…

Welcome to the end of the week and another edition of Happy Hour! Just sit back, relax, and enjoy your end of the week roundup of all things interesting in the land of  money.

Twitter Crash

There was a lot of drama this week thanks to a fake Associated Press tweet claimed $200 billion in market cap in a matter of minutes. A well-respected news organization getting hacked is big news. A bigger concern is the how the market reacted to a fake story in large part due to computerized trading.

High Frequency Trading (HFT) involves computers that use algorithms to place thousands of orders in milliseconds based on specific parameters. The argument HFT firms use is that it provides liquidity to the markets. Which is arguable, based on what we saw this week after the AP hacked tweet.

To be clear, a coding error didn’t cause this weeks flash crash. But it’s the biggest concern going forward, having already been a cause of most minor crashes so far. Continue Reading…

Welcome to the end of the week and another edition of Happy Hour! Just sit back, relax, and enjoy your end of the week roundup of all things interesting in the land of  money.

Bad Behavior

Not everyone is cut out to invest like the pros. Some people aren’t cut out to invest at all. Our behavior only allows us so much room to work. Which is why Carl Richard’s recent blog post is so appropriate. It’s a response to a prominent business news channel that now offers its own ETFs. Something I’ll never endorse.

While ETFs may be a great fit for your portfolio, that doesn’t mean it has to be. ETFs are just one possibility of many for your investment strategy. A strategy that needs to take your behavior, intelligence, time, and goals into consideration. Your portfolio is built to protect your money. And sometimes it’s being protected from you. Continue Reading…