Observations, Calculations, and Values
Paul Kedrosky’s chart shows the average P/E multiples of various exchanges around the world. He points out that for the price of one Chi-Next, you could buy seven Canadas (or by that logic even more Brazils).
Other observations:
* It makes me wonder if I were a CEO or a CFO pondering a [...]
At the Fall 2009 Value Investing Congress, David Einhorn delivered this insightful speech. Here are a few pieces of his wisdom:
On the Too Big to Fail Doctrine and Lehman
The proper way to deal with too-big-to-fail, or too inter-connected to fail, is to makesure that no institution is too big or inter-connected to fail. The test [...]
Tonight I came across the above map posted at a site called Weathersealed.com, and I was relieved to find out that within the continental US, I’ll never be more than 107 miles from a McDonalds, a point that he calls, “Mc Farthest Spot”.
Though the author doesn’t explain a lot about how the above map [...]
Here’s a nice graphic showing the tradeoffs we make to get our fix of cafffeine.
The full sized graphic can be found here or here.
Courtesy of the New York Times, this graphic confirms that the music industry has shrunk each year for the last ten. The industry did $16 billion of CD sales in 1999, but only about a third of that ten years later. That statistic says alot about how long it takes people’s habits to change. On [...]
Given what we’re spending on bailouts, is it really too much to ask for a little but of public spending on bicycle programs to improve urban congestion. In Paris last summer, I noticed that there thousands of public bicycles available for rental.
Here’s a map I found of US public bike programs. [...]
The basic fact pattern, as I’m understanding it is:
Ken Lewis of BofA offers to buy Merrill in September 2008.
In December 2008, Ken Lewis tries to invoke a MAC (Material Adverse Change) clause to pull out, because Merrill has posted $12 billion in losses in the last quarter.
Secretary of the Treasury, Hank Paulson, and Fed Chairman [...]
Here’s an interesting graphic that I came across on The Big Picture that tries to answer the question of how long our natural resources will last. The challenge with this kind of analysis is that there is an underlying assumption that the amount of any one commodity is fixed. It may be that commodities just [...]
Over on Aaron Edelheit’s blog, Investing in a Life of Value, he points out that BMW sold a mere 10 7 series sedans in February in all of North America. Last year’s number of 1502. It may be that they’re replacing the 7 series with a new version, but in looking at the rest of [...]
Om Malik posted this nice chart above which crisply describes the global demographics of cellphone penetration, across geographies and technologies. There’s just enough data to get the major ideas across, and yet no so much that it drowns the reader. It’s simple, elegant, and useful. And hard for me to believe that [...]