Energy Production and Earthquakes

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/04/01/mice-sing-just-like-birds-but-we-cant-hear-them/

Hewitt Heiserman: "Ben Graham and the Growth Investor" | Talks at Google

Published on Mar 8, 2016

Hewitt
Heiserman authored "It's Earnings That Count" and is finishing his
second book, “The Checklist Investor”. He is a member of the Boston
Security Analyst Society and CFA Institute. He has written for several
investing publications.. He graduated from Kenyon College and received
the Faculty Award for Distinguished Achievement. He is an Ironman
finisher, and is active in open land preservation.

The slides to pair with this talk can be found at: https://goo.gl/kg1BtL

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Link: https://youtu.be/7sOX0xtyPF8

 

Hewitt Heiserman: "Ben Graham and the Growth Investor" | Talks at Google

Published on Mar 8, 2016

Hewitt
Heiserman authored "It's Earnings That Count" and is finishing his
second book, “The Checklist Investor”. He is a member of the Boston
Security Analyst Society and CFA Institute. He has written for several
investing publications.. He graduated from Kenyon College and received
the Faculty Award for Distinguished Achievement. He is an Ironman
finisher, and is active in open land preservation.

The slides to pair with this talk can be found at: https://goo.gl/kg1BtL

• 
  

  Category
  

  • People  Blogs
• 
  

  License - Standard YouTube License
  

 

Link: https://youtu.be/7sOX0xtyPF8

 

Rich Money Managers

The Economist Verified account ‏@TheEconomist

In ancient times, the poor looked after the assets of the rich. Today it is the reverse

 http://econ.st/1SyWvNp 

 

Behavioral Finance ‏@victorricciardi

Risk Type – What is it and why does it matter to you? http://traderbehaviour.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/risk-type-what-is-it-and-why-does-it.html …

Canada is the only G7 country without a stockpile of at least hundreds of tonnes of gold.

Canada’s gold stash down to last bit as it almost empties reserves

Canada’s official holdings of the precious metal now amounts to just a few dozen ounces after it nearly sold 22,000 ounces of gold coins in February.

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Chris Ratcliffe / Bloomberg 

One hundred gram gold bars at Gold Investments in London in 2014. Data from the World Gold Council suggest Canada stands apart from its industrialized peers as the only G7 country without a stockpile of at least hundreds of tonnes of gold. 

By: The Canadian Press, Published on Thu Mar 03 2016

 


OTTAWA—The Canadian government has nearly completed a gradual sell-off of its gold reserves as its holdings of the precious metal now amount to just a few dozen ounces.

Data from the World Gold Council suggest Canada stands apart from its industrialized peers as the only G7 country without a stockpile of at least hundreds of tonnes of gold.

The federal Finance Department says Ottawa unloaded nearly 22,000 ounces of gold coins in February for about $35 million.

The department says the government now holds just 77 ounces of gold — valued around $130,000.

A department spokesman says the government has a long-standing policy of diversifying its portfolio by selling physical commodities like gold in order to invest instead in assets that are more easily traded.

Former senior Finance Department bureaucrat Don Drummond says he doesn’t think it makes any sense for Canada to hold any gold because it hasn’t delivered a good rate of return over time and it costs money to store it.

Drummond says that hundreds of years ago gold symbolized the wealth of a country.

Canada has been gradually selling from its gold stash for decades and, in recent years, the government has increased its holdings of U.S. and British currencies.

In February, the U.S. held about 8,133 tonnes of gold, which made up 72 per cent of its reserves, according to the World Gold Council.

The council also said Germany had 3,381 tonnes for 66 per cent of its reserves last month, while Italy and France each held more than 2,400 tonnes — over 60 per cent of their respective reserves.

 

More on thestar.com

 

 

Link: http://www.thestar.com/business/2016/03/03/gold-no-longer-glitters-for-canada-as-it-almost-empties-its-reserves.html 

 

 

 

 

What Are Newmont Mining's Acquisitions Plans?

 

 

 

Newmont Says Every $100 Gold Gain Adds $350 Million to Cash Flow

 

February 29, 2016 — 9:55 AM PST

• `I'm very comfortable with our debt structure': CEO Goldberg
• Company is still bullish on gold prices in long term

 

“I’m very comfortable with our debt structure overall,” Goldberg said. “We’re still bullish long term for gold.”

Gold advanced 10 percent since the end of January on Comex in New York, poised for the biggest February gain since futures trading data began in 1975. Turmoil across global equity and currency markets has sparked demand for a haven.

At the same time, there is increasing doubt that the Federal Reserve will move as quickly as it planned to raise rates because the expansion may weaken. That increases the allure of bullion as a store of value. Prices fell in the previous three years, reaching a five-year low in December as Fed officials increased borrowing costs for the first time in almost a decade.

“As long as real interest rates stay down below 3 percent a year, that’s generally good for gold,” Goldberg said. At “$1,200 or $1,300 an ounce, we still see it as a good price where we can deliver good free-cash flow and dividends back to shareholders."

While larger rival Barrick Gold Corp. has been selling assets, Newmont has responded to a prolonged slump in gold prices by continuing to expand. In June, the company agreed to buy the Cripple Creek & Victor mine in Colorado for $820 million and in October it announced plans to expand its Tanami operations in Australia.

Buying more assets would depend “on the value of the opportunity, if it makes sense long term,” Goldberg said in an interview on Bloomberg Television.

What Are Newmont Mining's Acquisitions Plans?



Link: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-29/newmont-says-every-100-gold-gain-adds-350-million-to-cash-flow

Warning of a Crash - strategy has become too popular

Opinion: ‘Smart-beta’ investing guru is now warning of a crash

Published: Feb 25, 2016



Rob Arnott says the popular strategy has become too popular

By BrettArends

Columnist

Dump “quality” stocks and buy “value” stocks.

That’s the call from Rob Arnott, the legendary financial guru and chairman of Research Affiliates, an investment firm in Newport Beach, Calif.

He says stocks bearing high-quality characteristics — such as high profits, strong balance sheets and so on — have now become far too expensive in relation to the rest of the stock market.

Meanwhile, so-called “value” stocks — which generally mean boring companies that have low future growth prospects but are cheap in relation to current profits and dividends — are at one of their biggest discounts in modern history.

Arnott’s latest research is a salutary warning that smart beta, like anything, is subject to the laws of financial gravity, known in the trade as ‘mean reversion.’

Arnott’s call may be useful for investors looking to find the best bargains. But how he reaches this conclusion is equally fascinating.

The big trend in investing since the financial crisis has been the discovery of so-called “smart beta,” which means investing in stocks based on characteristics like low volatility, high quality and high momentum.

A ton of academic research has found that such strategies would have earned you higher returns with lower risk over many decades if you had followed them.

As a result, there’s been a flood of mutual funds, exchange traded funds and institutional portfolios designed to help investors profit from the “alpha” of “smart beta” — which is Wall Street jargon for saying they hope to make you lots of money.

Arnott was among the pioneers of this research, and is one of the most respected names in finance. So why has he turned against it?

Simple. Smart beta has become so popular, it’s now dangerous, he says. Indeed, a “smart-beta crash” is now “reasonably likely,” he warns.

A stock is worth only the present value of its future cash flow, just as, say, investment property is worth only the present value of its future net rents.

The more you pay for the investment, the less a bargain it is. During a mania, a fad or a bubble, people end up paying too much. So even though the future cash flow (or net rents) flow through, the investor loses money.

Historically, you’ve done very well if you invested in the stocks of companies that had high business quality (such as high profits, low debts, stability and so on), and in stocks that had low volatility. You made more money, with less risk, over time. Hence the rise of “smart-beta” strategies that targeted such stocks.

But as more people discovered these phenomena, they joined in the demand for smart-beta stocks – and drove up the price. At some point, while the business remains one with high quality or low volatility, the stock

And there’s a further, dangerous twist. 

 

As an investment fashion becomes more popular, people drive up the price. But as they drive up the price, they then start factoring that extra bump in valuations into their forecasts for the future. 

 

So people get even more bullish while they should be getting bearish. It’s like jumping on a seesaw at the top and thinking it’s going to keep going up.
Arnott’s latest research paper is a salutary warning that smart beta, like anything, is subject to the basic laws of financial gravity, generally known in the trade as “mean reversion.” If you wanted to bet against it, you’d go out right now and buy the lowest-quality stocks, on the basis that they are out of fashion and therefore the best relative bargain.

There are, however, less drastic alternatives. Arnott finds that simple, old-fashioned “value” strategies — which invest in the stocks that are cheap in relation to present profits and dividends — look like a bargain now. Value stocks have outperformed growth stocks by around 3 percentage points a year over the long term. But they are currently near historic lows in relative terms.


“The value effect is … in its cheapest decile in history,” he says. Value is out of fashion, partly because it’s looked bad for the past seven or eight years, and partly because investors have become excited by smart beta instead.

Or, as always, one could simply pick a random collection of stocks and invest an equal amount in each one. Equal-weight strategies, like value, have beaten the traditional indexes over the long term. And they would seem to be immune from fashion, because they don’t weight anything at all.

 

 

 

 Source: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/smart-beta-investing-guru-is-now-warning-of-a-crash-2016-02-25