Well, it’s official. Bernie Madoff is to be locked up for 150 years. Although it’s not exactly investing related, the largest fraud in history cannot pass without comment. Madoff’s attorney must have been dreaming when he offered 12 years; Madoff’s fraud lasted longer than that, and it makes no sense to me that he should […]
Shorting stocks is widely considered dangerous. The old adage is that “Stocks can only fall to zero, but they can rise to infinity.” I’ve always been unsatisfied with this explanation, because I’ve never seen a stock actually rise to infinity, and if I did see one I would short it. The problem with shorting is […]
On a forum I visit regularly there was a post when a novice investor asked if there was a good beginner stock that he could learn the ropes with. The general consensus was that there is no such thing as a beginner stock; all stocks were viewed as extremely complex generators of investment returns, full […]
A great deal of analysis is devoted to ferreting out a company’s true earnings. It may be necessary, for example, to adjust asset impairment costs if the reality is not that the assets suddenly became impaired but that the company overpaid for them to begin with. Benjamin Graham’s Security Analysis devoted a significant number of […]