howardroark

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howardroark replied to the Deranged Monkey Criticism board. 2:40 PM

Re: Poll: Percent comparison to October 2007

I'm a simple guy so I am trying to distill this down to what I think are the simple takeaways. I hope I will be corrected in a simple manner if I am off-base...

1. Current Fed monetary policy...QEx, etc. and everything else is nothing to [more]

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howardroark replied to the Deranged Monkey Criticism board. 12:56 PM

Re: Poll: Percent comparison to October 2007

So setting aside debt, partially because I don't believe they have depressed yields as much as everyone else and it's really driven by marginal buyers, what about equities? Can they really taper or end and stocks hold up? Why won't we immediately [more]

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howardroark replied to the Deranged Monkey Criticism board. 9:31 AM

Re: Poll: Percent comparison to October 2007

to quote myself, my 'uneasy feeling' comes from the feeling that debt has not been wrung out but instead have been transferred to the government's balance sheet (nobody disputes this, right?)...

I do know this - I wish roark would come on [more]

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howardroark replied to the Deranged Monkey Criticism board. 12:02 PM

Re: Place Your Bets

So I thought you were heading for a contrarian regression of margins to the mean, but instead you head to the top of the pile, above consensus, thumbing your nose at the axiomatic truism, reasoned thought, jittery pessimists, and even timid [more]

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howardroark replied to the Deranged Monkey Criticism board. 2:26 PM

Re: Place Your Bets

Well, it appears this poll has been a failure. DTM is the only Reversionist actually willing to be counted. Duplicating the methodology of the Thomson Reuters consensus wasn't quite what I had in mind.

A special shout out to Naj, EddieFelson [more]

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howardroark posted to the Deranged Monkey Criticism board. 12:36 PM

Place Your Bets

We've exhausted the Hussman Identity Theory debate. But beneath that fairly tale (and by that I mean axiom) lies an interesting prediction. -- that corporate profit margins are 70% above normal and will soon enough dramatically revert. This is a [more]

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howardroark replied to the Deranged Monkey Criticism board. 6:49 PM

Re: OT: 401k disaster

If you could humour me and comment on this question, perhaps in light of graphs 3 and 4 at the following link, for instance, that certainly seems to show a pretty tight temporal relationship

When I do actually stop without warning, [more]

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howardroark replied to the Deranged Monkey Criticism board. 9:35 PM

Re: OT: 401k disaster

So here is roark's argument about how household spending can go down, and corporate profits survive: revenue goes down, interest rates go up, labour costs go up, marginal investment returns go down, but VOILA, corporate profits have survived. The [more]

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howardroark replied to the Deranged Monkey Criticism board. 5:52 PM

Re: OT: 401k disaster

Clearly, there is no causality between the number of straw man arguments made and the number of non-straw man arguments, but for a given level of argumentativeness, you must agree that the decline of one will always be accompanied by an increase [more]

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howardroark replied to the Deranged Monkey Criticism board. 10:35 AM

Re: OT: 401k disaster

Again, I think his portfolio management has been terrible for a number of years, and the Google commentary stands out as embarrassing, but most of his commentary that deals with macro particularly unsustainable type situations like the last credit [more]

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howardroark replied to the Deranged Monkey Criticism board. 4:24 PM

Re: OT: 401k disaster

FoF Savings is 6.6% or $910Bn. NIPA savings was 4.6%. I think you/other must have read the last line on the pg.17 by mistake which is the difference btw the two or 2.0%. NIPA shows a savings rate of 5.3% for the 2008-2010 period.

He [more]

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howardroark replied to the Deranged Monkey Criticism board. 1:03 PM

Re: FRB white paper: Fed impacts long bonds 35-4

Speaking of central bank theory, any thoughts on the likely path in Japan?

Is this one of those things where you try to get me to tell you who sang "We're Not Gonna Take It" just so everyone can laugh at my lisp? [more]

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howardroark replied to the Deranged Monkey Criticism board. 9:16 PM

Re: FRB white paper: Fed impacts long bonds 35-4

thanks. i must be jaded from selling hpq too early, as i have no clue what you are saying here even after reading it twice, but i assume you are not a fan. :)

When you ask your weird great uncle what he thought of the game last night [more]

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howardroark replied to the Deranged Monkey Criticism board. 2:33 PM

Re: FRB white paper: Fed impacts long bonds 35-4

I like his framing of intermittent waves of rules chasing loopholes in an undulating credit market full of principal-agent frictions. I also like his description of one-way agents selling mis-measured put options amid information frictions. His [more]

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howardroark replied to the Deranged Monkey Criticism board. 3:12 PM

Re: FRB white paper: Fed impacts long bonds 35-4

Macrotourist question, wouldn't the marginal seller/buyer logically determine the price in a liquid secondary market rather than some price agnostic buyer making transparent purchases, at least over any period except extreme short [more]

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howardroark replied to the Deranged Monkey Criticism board. 12:14 PM

Re: FRB white paper: Fed impacts long bonds 35-45bps

I think most (but definitely not all) of these attempts do tentatively conclude that there has been at least some direct effect of QE on longer term rates outside of the expectations channel; i.e. they create reductions in the real component of the [more]

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howardroark replied to the Deranged Monkey Criticism board. 5:33 PM

Re: Highly Random Question

With most companies that generate revenue via advertising, there is a strong connection between consumption of the product and revenue generated. With Google, this connection is not necessarily present.

I like this question. I can [more]

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howardroark replied to the Berkshire Hathaway board. 4:50 PM

Re: Heinz bonds

Yup, that's right: despite being junk, they are yielding only 3.6%.
I excluded the batch that expires this year, the rest are a sample of the 2016-2032. This assumes my data source is correct, Morningstar, for which I can't [more]

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howardroark replied to the Deranged Monkey Criticism board. 6:03 PM

Re: Highly Random Question

question for you. do you think Android will be WinTel again or would Apple sustain a bigger market share than they did with Mac?

Why I thought you'd never ask. Of course, I am probably the least qualified person you know to answer [more]

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howardroark replied to the Berkshire Hathaway board. 3:33 PM

Re: Heinz for free...

I think 6.25% debt for only 43% of the capital stack, with Berkshire behind you for 12 billion or over 43%, isn't likely. I think your 750 million interest expense is way off.

I tend to agree it will be a point or so lower than that, [more]