How Likely Is a 25-Bagger within 10 Years? We Are No Fans of, at Best, 4% Odds
We would like to start with a pre-emptive apology for being terribly boring folks who tend to be grounded in probabilities. That predisposition has made the current environment somewhat challenging for us as we contemplate enigmas such as negative ...
Passive Vehicles & the Profit Penalty – A Brief Look at Index Investing in the Small & Mid Cap World
Executive Summary Introduction: As a client of our work we know you are an active manager and hence familiar with the barrage of news stories that seem to revel in our industry’s pain. In fact, just this last Monday ...
Debt and Stock Repurchases
Executive Summary Introduction: Clients have asked us about media and sell-side reports that claim near-record levels of U.S. corporate borrowing are being used to fund significant net stock repurchases in the US. Some observers worry this may be reminiscent ...
Testing Shiller P/E’s Efficacy for Single Stocks
Conclusions on the Quick Conclusions: Shiller P/E works well for stock selection within Large Cap. Mean reversion for earnings growth seems to happen much more within the Large Cap universe than within SMID. The improvement in earnings growth for ...
Volatile Times in Semiconductors – Canary or Canard and Does It Even Matter to Future Semi Returns?
Over the last year, our Large Cap portfolio has had a meaningful overweight in a select group of Semiconductor stocks. As Fig. 1 shows below, these names have been solid contributors to our portfolio returns as they have outperformed ...
Quality Conundrum, Part III – The Persistence and Performance of Quality
• Introduction: How to Define Quality? • Quality Persistence and Kailash’s Simple Quality Proxy o Return on Equity o Accruals o EBITDA Margins • Quality Performance • Conclusion: Kailash Core Models Work ...
Indexing Dilemmas: Is “Smart Beta” Really That Smart?
• Introduction: The Drawbacks of Indices Weighted by Market Cap • Equal Weight and Smart Beta Are at Best Only Partial Solutions • Cheap & Small: The Success Paradox ...
Sidestepping the Sphinx – Performance Brief on our December IT Picks
December View Reviewed Subsequent Performance Current Level of Conviction December View Reviewed In our December 2013 piece, The Sphinx Guarding Technology Returns: The Complex Role of Valuation within IT, we discussed the difficulties inherent in picking IT stocks. We ...
Comparing the Small & Mid Cap Valuation Tails – Low Dispersion, Reduced Opportunities & Fundamental Fixes
Introduction Cheapest vs. Most Expensive Deciles Fundamental Consternation & Consideration Using Our Core Model to Expand the Opportunity Set Summary Tables Conclusions Exhibits Introduction In our first paper published today, Bubble Trouble? Comparing the Current Market to 1999 and ...
Bubble Trouble? – Comparing the Current Markets to 1999 and 2007
Introduction Quantification of Overall SMID and Large Cap Market Metrics Summary Charts Conclusion: The Sun Micro Sanity Check Appendix Introduction Many clients have asked us for our perspective on how the markets look now compared to previous periods. Specifically, ...
Comparing the Large Cap Valuation Tails – Low Dispersion, Reduced Opportunities & Fundamental Fixes
Introduction Cheapest vs. Most Expensive Deciles Fundamental Consternation & Consideration Using our Core Products to Expand the Opportunity Set Summary Tables Conclusions Exhibits Note to readers: This paper is meant for limited distribution. It follows the same format and ...
Correlation, Contagion & the Quant Crash – Fundamentally Driven Process vs. Pattern Recognition
Introduction Building a Synthetic Quant Fund, By Khandani & Lo The August 2007 “Quant Crash” Kailash Product Performance in Quant’s Darker Days: Lower Volatility & Leverage Post-Crash Performance Conclusion: We Are Process Based Fundamental Investors Introduction In our recent ...