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From Sizemore Insights
The Laws of Disruption
“The Law of Disruption,” writes Larry Downes in his new book of the same name, “is a simple but unavoidable principle of modern life: technology changes exponentially, but social, economic, and legal systems change incrementally.” Today, we’re going to focus on one particular area of the legal system that modern technology is disrupting—copyrights. This is [...]
Kimberly-Clark: Investing in a Dirty Business
From the title of this article, you might think that I’m recommending a “sin stock.” While I generally like sin stocks (particularly tobacco stocks) as long-term investments, today’s recommendation has nothing to do with vice. It is certainly a dirty industry, however, and one that stands to make record profits in the years ahead. So, [...]
If You Think Ben Bernanke is Unpopular…
If you think that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is unpopular, consider the tragic case of Takahashi Korekiyo, who served as Bank of Japan governor from 1911-1913 and as finance minister and prime minister in the 1920s and 1930s. Gillian Tett recounts his story in the Financial Times. In the first decades of the 20th century, [...]
The Cult of Equity Is Dead. Long Live Equities.
In pre-republican France, upon the passing of a sitting monarch the Duc d’Uzès would proclaim “The King is dead. Long live the King!” The idea, of course, was that a new king was rising up to take the place of the old. The Crown as an institution was alive and well; it was just that [...]
Turkcell: Investing in Young Turks
The Financial Times ran a headline several weeks ago that really stuck with me: “Emerging markets fuel consumer goods groups.” According to the FT, Procter & Gamble (PG), Unilever (UL) and Colgate-Palmolive (CL) have all enjoyed a great first half of 2010 “led by strong demand in emerging markets in Asia and Latin America.” Of [...]
Diamonds and Scotch: The Rich Man’s Recession is Over
We appear to have a tale of two consumers. Consider these two headlines from the August 30 edition of the Financial Times: “Luxury goods enjoy boom as mass-market stores suffer.” “US consumers split into two camps” It may seem somewhat counterintuitive, but there is actually a mild boom underway in luxury goods. This is particularly [...]
The Price of Sin
The title above was from a 2005 paper authored by Princeton professor Harrison Hong and University of British Colombia professor Marcin Kacperczyk (full paper available at http://tinyurl.com/2bh7ubu). It has been widely accepted that “sin” stocks—i.e. publicly-traded companies involved in producing guilty pleasures such as alcohol, tobacco, and gaming and politically incorrect products like weapons—make good [...]
Is there a Bubble in Bonds?
“Individual investors are fed up with the stock market,” writes TechTicker. “Burnt by 10 years of negative returns, two crashes, and a current economy mired with high unemployment and lackluster growth, many are throwing in the towel.” Perhaps not surprisingly, retail investors have instead poured their funds into bonds in record numbers, helping to send [...]
The Graying of the Great Powers
Neil Howe, who previously co-wrote several groundbreaking books on demographic trends with William Strauss (Generations, The Fourth Turning, Millennials Rising), published a new book in 2008 with Richard Jackson: The Graying of the Great Powers: Demography and Geopolitics in the 21st Century. We consider Howe’s prior work with Strauss to be required reading for anyone [...]
Death Elasticity and Taxes
The following is an excerpt from an article I originally wrote in June 2008. Today, with the Bush tax cuts set to expire, the insights of this article are more important than ever. Moving on to a different area in human predictability, Gerald Prante of the Tax Foundation recommended a white paper that examines how [...]
Is the founder and editor of The Sizemore Investment Letter, a monthly newsletter dedicated to finding superior investments backed by powerful macro trends.