Smart Investor Today
A weekly column about markets, written slowly.
One column a week, occasionally two when somebody with more expertise than me agrees to write one. No model portfolio, no ticker of the day, and no attempt to tell you what happens next.
Rates
Futures pricing is a consensus, not a forecast, and the difference matters most in the weeks when the consensus moves fastest. Since January the implied path has moved by more than fifty basis points twice, in opposite directions, on data that did not remotely justify the swing.
Market structure
The index is fine. The tenth percentile of the index is not. Median daily turnover in the bottom quintile of the small-cap universe has fallen for six consecutive quarters, and that is the number that decides whether you can get out at the price on your screen.
Guest column · Utilities
Every large investor-owned utility has raised its five-year capital plan on the same demand assumption. If that assumption is off by a quarter in either direction, the rate-base arithmetic stops working, and the equity story goes with it.
Reading filings
An adjusted earnings number is an argument. The cash flow statement is a record. Here is the short list I actually check first, in the order I check it, and what each line has caught for me in the past.
This column
Written by Harriet Voss, who spent eleven years on a fixed-income desk and has now spent longer writing about it than doing it. More about the column.
Recent guests
Standing note
Nothing on this site is advice, and none of it is specific to you. I hold positions; they are listed on the disclosures page and updated the same week they change.
Smart Investor Today · published Thursdays · about · disclosures · glossary