If you have read the book “Bringing Down the House” by Ben Mezrich or seen the movie “21” based on the book, then you are at least familiar with the system employed by a team of MIT students to beat the game of blackjack. For those that have not seen the movie, the system is simple. You have players sitting […]
This quick test will tell you if you have the mentality of the world’s greatest investors: 1) A blackjack player has 19, takes a hit and gets a 2 for 21. Is the decision to take a hit a: a. Good decision b. Bad decision 2) You buy a house for $1 million that subsequently declines in value to $500,000. […]
Michael Lewis and David Einhorn recently wrote a two part Op-Ed article in the NY Times titled “The End of the Financial World as We Know It” and “How to Repair a Broken Financial World.” In it they discuss the precarious position of the status of US financial markets as the bastion of high financial thinking in the global economy […]
I was interviewed on Fox Business News by Liz Claman this past week and spoke about 8 Mistakes Money Managers Make. Here’s a recap of those 8 mistakes. The interview can be found here and the full article can be read on Alpha Theory’s website. 1. Confidence Bias- only search for information to support your thesis 2. Good Stock Paradox- […]
How Asset Management Software Vendors Should Adapt to Market Volatility Using the VIX to Direct the Sales Process –Software vendors selling to the Asset Management industry clearly understand that market volatility has a negative impact on their business, but how do you quantify the impact? At our firm, Alpha Theory (www.AlphaTheory.com), we have found that there is a severe negative […]
Bill Ackman-Style Investing: Know that you can’t know the unknowable
The 3Q08 Pershing Square letter, written by portfolio manager Bill Ackman, is a great example of the salient decision making that good fundamental managers employ. They strive to eliminate unanswerable questions as not to distract the firm from their ultimate goal; profiting from fundamental research. “We spend little time trying to outguess market prognosticators about the short-term future of the […]