Credit Writedowns

Five-year returns almost never exceed 100% (denoted by the dotted red line in the chart). There are three notable bubble periods in stocks above 100%: pre-1929, pre-1987 and pre-1999*. This is not one of those periods.

Top billing Banks’ losses and capital: The new version of the paradox of Achilles and the tortoise - VoxEU This is a post right down my alley. You've probably seen my list of Bloomberg's writedown/ capital raised tally. Well, there is a…

Talk about ugly, American Home Mortgage, an outfit which went bust two days before the credit crunch hit a year ago, is now liquidating. We knew equity holders were going to get zippo, nada, zilch, but what about creditors of the mortgage…

For those of you interested in London property prices, the Times has a good rundown borough by borough in PDF. The Royal Borough tops the list with an average price over £1.4 million followed by Westminster at over £1 million. Why would…

Top billing California bank stocks: The herd gets thinned again - LA Times The implications of this story in a state that has seen the largest drops in house prices anywhere is that many busts are going to happen in California. There is…

Kenneth Rogoff, the Harvard Professor and former IMF Chief Economist shares my view that another large U.S. financial institution will go bust. I predicted this will happen before the end of 2008. He gives no specific date, but he does go…

Andrew Smithers is an economic commentator whose book 'Valuing Wall Street' I highly recommend. He is another market economist who shares my view that a 'Buy and Hold' Strategy is not necessarily the best. But he also has an economic…

'Buy and hold' is a myth that I hope dies an ugly death just like the Efficient Market Hypothesis. When one looks at the numbers, it is as plain as day that the stock market moves in sweeping trends that take decades to unfold.

Warren Buffett has done pretty well for himself, amassing a net worth north of $50 billion. Yet, for all his detailed analysis and combing through financial reports, he has never said he models things out to the nth degree.In fact, Buffett…

As you could probably tell -- from all the stories I have been writing about the Baltics, Denmark, Sweden, you name it -- I believe that Europe is the next leg down in the global housing bubble. As such, it will pay to focus as much…