The latest from James Montier of GMO is a rundown on the current U.S. market valuation. Feel free to read that part, if you want (links are below).

I want to focus on his explanation of the factors that drive market returns and valuation. Because when you understand the factors, you can reach your own conclusions on where the market stands on valuation.

There are a lot of factors you can consider when doing this, but most are secondary. Besides, this isn’t rocket science, so let’s over complicate it. It’s best to keep it simple, which Montier’s does: Continue Reading…

I spent most of this week getting caught up on what I missed while on vacation. Non-existant best describes my online access on the trip, which was weird in a good way. On the rare chance I got a connection, I swear I had faster internet speeds in 1997.

Not having your phone blow up every few minutes with Twitter notifications or email updates is refreshing and relaxing. Thankfully, the world is so vast that we haven’t completely covered it with decent cell reception.

Something everyone must learn about the market (all news topics really) is the media makes all the noise sound important. Yet the real important stuff happens less often than they’d like you to believe. So you really can take some time off and never miss a beat. Continue Reading…

A quick note: Starting next week I’ll be unplugged and on vacation. So no articles for the next two weeks.

Financial models are meant to be used as good rules of thumb when making decisions. So simpler is usually better with highly complex, uncertain, and adaptive markets. Simplicity allows for flexibility in that type of environment.

But problems arise when people rely on models to make the uncertain certain or try to attain physics-like perfection. They get rigid complex models in the process. Continue Reading…

It’s an absolute certainty that anytime a portion of the market performs well, a new fund is created for it. It’s like clockwork.

There will always be a market for this stuff because the past returns look great and people love a good history of returns (no matter how short). Of course, I could argue it’s a contrarian indicator to stay away because the good returns were already made.

Now, ETFs make it even easier for the industry to mass produce these fad funds to take advantage of the latest hype. Case in point is the latest ETF creation for the FANGs – Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google, along with a few similar high performers.

All these new funds do is add to the confusion in fund land. Continue Reading…