OK, it’s time to have a serious conversation. I’ve said before it’s really easy to cry bubble and be way early and look stupid for a long time. But also, these people are usually right in the end. While I’m not ready to scream sell everything yet, I think it’s Continue Reading
A Market Murder Mystery: Who Is About to Kill the Tech Bubble?
Earlier this week, I wrote a mystery that probably was easier to solve than an Encyclopedia Brown book. This week, I’m not even going to pretend there’s a mystery. I’m just going to cut to the chase and tell you what the crime is and who dun it. What’s the Continue Reading
An Insuretech Murder Mystery: What Will Kill Today’s High Valuations?
I’m not going to spoil it this soon, but I’ll drop a pretty big hint…there’s only one obvious suspect (and it’s not Sideshow Bob). Keep reading and see if you can solve the mystery before I reveal the answer. Insurtech valuations (both public and private) have benefited greatly from the Continue Reading
Making Sense of Reddit, GameStop, Robinhood, and Bubbles
I can probably write five or more posts on last week’s market activity, but I’m going to try to consolidate it into one long post (about twice a normal effort) without it becoming a novel and do short(ish) comments on a long list of topics. Some of these topics I Continue Reading
GameStop: A Lesson In Short Squeezing
I guess I stumbled into some good timing recently in writing about the role of short squeezes in the valuations of Insuretech stocks as short squeezes have become the story of 2021 so far. Last week, I wrote about the prominent short seller Andrew Left, of Citron, who targeted LMND Continue Reading
Giving Back Its Gains: Lemonade Targeted By Shorts
I can’t believe I’m writing about Lemonade again. I have a whole bunch of other topics I’ve been wanting to get to, but when something timely come along, you adapt and change plans. This has now become a battleground stock between the old school shorts and the millennial longs. Both Continue Reading
Greater Fool: Lemonade is the Hare Extraordinaire
Funny, earlier in the week I was watching LMND go past 180 on no news and thinking “how have they not raised equity yet?” and, bingo, 24 hours later, here’s the raise. They couldn’t have timed it better. For those who remember the Insurance Hare piece, this is what the Continue Reading
The Socializing of Debt Bubbles aka Leverage Has Costs
As the US government debates how much “free” money to give out as stimulus, I realized there is something important missing from the conversation. Where does this free money come from? And do we have to pay it back to someone? Given the desire to keep raising the bid on Continue Reading
Ian’s Brief #7: AI, AEL, and ESG
Back with another Brief since too many things to talk about and not enough time to write them all up separately… That Didn’t Take Long! It was only a few weeks ago I outlined a new business model for life insurers. I suggested established insurers should focus their energy on Continue Reading
The Death of Factor Models Part II – Killed By Covid
Last time in part one, I discussed the theory of factor investing used by an increasingly large portion of the active management investment complex and the practical impediments to using it well. Today, I will more specifically address the foundational flaws in the practice and how they can lead to Continue Reading