Fact File: S&P 500 Volume Data

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on May 2, 2012 in Blog | 0 comments When analyzing long swathes of market history, commentators usually focus on changes in price or price-to-earnings ratios of the Standard & Poor 500. Trading volume data, however, are infrequently discussed. Yet there are many interesting facts to be gleaned from just a simple analysis of historical S&P 500 volume.   S&P 500 Historical Volume Data (2 Jan. 1951 – 31 Mar. 2012)...
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Fact File: Annual Budget of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Apr 27, 2012 in Blog | 0 comments The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which is charged with ensuring the proper functioning of U.S. financial markets worth at minimum $18,929 billion in market capitalization (the NYSE, NASDAQ, and AMEX combined), has a paltry annual budget of just $1.321 billion. Why paltry? To put this in perspective: The SEC budget is 99.99% smaller than the markets it is supposed to protect. The SEC...
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Components of Credit Spreads and Their Importance

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Apr 3, 2012 in Best of the Blog, Blog | 0 comments In an investment world with any number of potential credit shocks (see our coverage of debt crises in the eurozone, China, Japan, and the United States) and trillion dollar/euro/yen/yuan consequences, a detailed analysis of creditor risk and credit spreads is paramount. Contained within the difference between one asset’s current yield and another’s — holding all else equal — is a plethora of...
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Rethinking the Risk-Free Rate, Exploding a Fundamental Assumption

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Mar 20, 2012 in Best of the Blog, Blog | 0 comments After the Great Recession (2008 to the present), it is in vogue to criticize the risk-free rate of return as a spurious concept. This is not surprising given the twin sovereign debt crises of the European Union and the United States; both countries’ debt instruments previously served as proxies for the risk-free rate of return. Lost in the current discussion, and perhaps from the concept’s...
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An Overview of Alternatives to Credit Ratings

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Mar 14, 2012 in Best of the Blog, Blog | 0 comments Currently there is almost no “income” in fixed-income investing. In preceding decades interest rates took on the job of compensating investors for the credit risks they bear. But with no cash to compensate risks, analytical scrutiny of issuer creditworthiness has dramatically increased. Yet this scrutiny is happening in a kind of analytical vacuum as confidence in credit-rating agencies is near...
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Investing in Africa Now: Six Fictions Debunked

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Mar 14, 2012 in Blog | 0 comments At the Investing in Emerging Markets conference on 1–2 March 2012, the CEO of the private equity firm Development Partners International, Runa Alam, presented a solid case for investing in Africa. As a long-time skeptic, I found many of the details about investing in Africa surprising. I left Alam’s presentation with a more open mind about the opportunities available in Africa. In fact, my...
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