(Image: The Breach of the Saint Anthony’s Dike near Amsterdam, Jan Asselijn, 1651) “For some of the older deals, there’s stress building up in portfolios that will manifest in different ways. And then the last step is you’ll see capital-D defaults.”   – Armen Panossian, CEO, Oaktree Capital Management, December 2023...Read More

“There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to...Read More

“The pairing of SBC and buybacks can reduce and increase agency costs. They reduce agency costs if executives and other employees are aligned with shareholders and the company returns cash to shareholders rather than wasting it on investments that destroy value. They increase agency costs if they are an inefficient...Read More

“The traders hadn’t seen a move like that – ever. True, it had happened in 1987 and again in 1992. But Long-Term’s models didn’t go back that far. As far as Long-Term knew, it was a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence – a practical impossibility – and one for which the fund was...Read More

“Most institutional portfolios are badly out of balance. The returns of most institutional portfolios are 90+% driven by the return of equities, exposing them to a single adverse event which could last for decades, a poor performing equity market….not balancing the portfolio is so risky as to be imprudent.” –...Read More

“The nutshell is this: the old line economy stocks just don’t work because they have earnings and eventually rising interest rates impact earnings. New economy stocks have no earnings, so investors don’t see a need to exit.” – Wall Street analyst on CNBC, early March 2000 (said without irony)  |...Read More