September 2025
As Insights readers will know, we are big believers in the productivity benefits of artificial intelligence (AI)—with the rather large caveat that there are many applications where the technology isn’t quite ready yet.
June 2025
Managing expectations In recent months, we have talked about the implications of highly uncertain trade policy more than we’d like. The graph above illustrates the impact of recent trends on earnings expectations. While the direction of the trend is probably not surprising, we would emphasize that the magnitude of potential earnings remains highly speculative. If […]
May 2025
Confidence Game Markets have rebounded strongly off the tariff-induced lows of April. That said, business confidence and investment intentions remain depressed. We believe that volatility will remain high, both to the downside and the upside. It may not be relaxing, but these types of markets tend to breed excellent long-term opportunities. New Hires We are […]
April 2025
A New Day The only sure thing as we pen this month’s Insights is that our comments are likely to be stale by the time they’re published. The unsettling part is that gap is only a few hours! In times like these, when uncertainty is high, it is possible to have conviction in a few […]
February 2025
Trending The long-term trend of more and more assets flooding into passive Exchange-Traded Funds (ETF) from active mutual funds continues to kick off 2025. This structural shift in markets falls into the category of things that can generally be ignored as they develop, but at some point, a tipping point is triggered and the world […]
January 2025
Source Charts can be adjusted to fulfill any narrative, so we are always cognizant of the level of inference we take from any one visualization. That said, with a changing of the guard in the White House leading to policies that are almost certain to be inflationary, we are keeping a very close eye on […]
December 2024
Holiday Cheer 2024 has proven to be a year that gave investors reason to celebrate. There remains a certain sense of unease with overall valuations, no doubt a common Insights topic in the year to come, but there is little to complain about as we bring 2024 to a close. More importantly, we hope this […]
November 2024
A GAME OF NUMBERS Source: YCharts.com. © 2024 YCharts, Inc. All rights reserved We are sure you have heard enough about the U.S. election at this point, so we will spare you any further opinions and/or red shaded maps. Instead, some interesting data on house prices around the world which shows the impact demographics can […]
October 2024
Starting Point Source: @Marlin_Capital We have previously discussed the sea change in markets, with rates now declining across most developed markets. This particular topic is, in our opinion, the most important thing for investors to focus on at the moment. Given the highest starting valuations in modern history, the potential downside risk is material should […]
September 2024
Demographics = Destiny There is much discussion of the slowdown in China, with many pointing at the overinvestment in the housing market, debt, and a variety of other well documented issues. All economies are multi-faceted, so at the risk of oversimplification, we would highlight population growth as the overarching long-term issue. When your population is […]