New Year's Resolutions

1) lose weight 2) teach my kids to be more courageous, polite, and better at math 3) wag more, bark less

End of Year Tax Strategy

Above are the returns (based at 100) for a portfolio long the top 50 winners, short the bottom 50 losers. US stocks, market cap over $500MM...

Smile

People who smile more, are happier in the long run. This study looked at baseball cards from the early 1950s and coded whether players were...

Facts More Important than Theory

Most people think facts are easy and theory is difficult. It is often the other way around. As Charles Darwin wrote: False facts are highl...

Remember the Rational Model

Say there's a two-sided matching game, where you trade a good with another; not trading generates no utility, so you want to get the hig...

Merry Christmas

music from 0:50 to 2:40...

Some Myths are Better than Others

Norad tracks Santa. With about 2 billion Christians, say 1B independent households, and given Santa has a day to deliver gifts, that's ...

When People Agree for Different Reasons

Among people who might agree with me on various issues, it is usually for very different reasons. Consider the many reasons people are for ...

Bank Leverage Limits

I've seen several posts riffing on Tyler Cowen's American Interest article stating banks tend to go 'short volatility'. I...

Russ Roberts Interviews Joe Nocera

Russ Roberts interviews Joe Nocera about his book " All the Devils are Here ". I thought this book was OK, but it spent a lot of...

A Christmas Story

When I got out of grad school and was working for KeyCorp, the 8th largest bank in the US at that time, I found myself at a holiday employee...

AEA Meeting Topics

Hundreds of papers are being presented, and more than a few are sure to be very interesting, so keep up to date as the papers get filled in...

Frazzini and Pedersen Simulate Beta Arbitrage

Andrea Frazzini and lasse Pedersen have a paper out entitled 'Betting against Beta'. It has an insane number of tables and figures...

Risk Premium Doesn't Make Sense

The idea that risk begets return comes from the idea that people don't like risk. As risk is avoidable, by say putting one's money ...

Regulators All Talk

The problem when someone is given authority to regulate something really complicated, where the agents under regulation have vastly more kno...

Scary Santa

My little princess Izzie (3.5 y.o.) had been apprehensive about sitting with Santa, but finally mentioned she was up for a tête à tête to ...

Confidentiality Agreements

When I was young and stupid I signed a Confidentiality Agreement without much thought, like the way one clicks those 'EULAs' when yo...

Low Volatility Investing Fun Facts

Robeco has a 'minimum volatility' portion for their webpage (see here ). I'm a huge proponent , having invested this way myself...

Momentum Still Lagging

The graph shows the total return to a strategy long positive momentum stocks, short negative momentum stocks (it's from Kenneth French...

Nassim Taleb Imitates Kanye West

The often angry-looking Nassim Taleb just published a book of unlinked tweets: The Bed of Procrustes . It is short and has a Kindle version...

Jeter's $45MM Seems Fair

Derek Jeter has had a great career, but last year he hit .270 (mediocre)). Nonetheless, he's fielding offers like $45MM for 3 years. Ye...

Economists Have The Answer(s)

Harvard educated economist Brad DeLong 's parents also went to Harvard, but so did two of his grandparents, two great-grandparents, and ...