Eric Falkenstein — Finding Alpha pdf

My book The Missing Risk Premium is a steal at only $15, but my first book, Finding Alpha, is a $65, which is a bit much for anyone not expensing their books. Finding Alpha goes over why the current asset pricing model fails, with lots of evidence, explains why economists still like it, and then in chapters 10-13 shows concrete examples of how investors have actually found alpha.…

You can download the individual chapters in pdf form here...

Thanks.

Falkenblog
Finding Alpha pdf
Eric Falkenstein

I will be giving a stock picking course on March 25. Find out more.

Attend my stock picking course.  Friday, March 25 from 9am NY time to 4pm NY time.

I will be giving a stock picking course Friday, March 25. The course fee is $595. Here's what you will learn...

Here are some of the things I will teach you in my value stock selection course:

• How to select high quality, dividend paying stocks below market value
  
• How to time entry and exits with ease
• How to correctly diversify your portfolio
• Knowing when entire industry groups become undervalued
• Picking the cream of the crop of stocks at huge discounts
• How to have the proper "Mental Game"

Plus more.

For more info click below or, email me.

-Mike Norman

It's called Democracy

hat tip to Scott Fullwiler

The HIP (Human Impact + Profit) method of investment analysis

The very fact that we have to keep restating the obvious is itself an illustration of why we keep failing.

Personal level.
There's ample evidence that narrow pursuit of wealth defines neither the "best" adults, nor the "best" and most enduring families. After all, how many people would sell their kids, spouses or kin ... for any amount of currency? [Yes, everyone defines "best" differently, and differently each year. Nevertheless, when push comes to shove, currency possession never tops the defining traits of healthy individuals, or their families.]

Corporate level.
There's another article every year or so, documenting that companies which have wider goals than simply profits are sustained - on average - for much longer periods.

National level.
There is, of course, also ample data that nations that have wider social goals than just dog-eat-dog personal profits ... also endure and prosper better than those without general welfare of the people as their goal. It's called Democracy. Odd that the USA, of all nations, would forget that.

Yer doin' a heckuva job, Wall St.!
However, at the end of each day, whatever Wall St's nominal "job" is, it sure as hell doesn't correlate very well, at all, with our individual, corporate, or national REAL work and purpose. Certainly not with Public Purpose. And that bit about doin' the work dictated by one or more gods? Get real! (Not just nominal.)

As Warren Mosler keeps repeating, the entire finance industry long ago became more trouble than it is worth. Isn't it obvious, once again, that OUR responsibility is to change our own trivial, accounting industry, sooner rather than later? So that it can be a useful tool aiding OUR adaptive rate, rather than a parasitical burden, on OUR nation and culture?

British Bankers Will Again Own Spain?

“A flock of vulture funds is gathering in Madrid in the hope that a banking sector shakeout will finally deliver a bonanza of real estate and distressed company assets at rock bottom prices.”

Reminds me of Jim Rogers advice for vulture investors.

“Investors, get thee to a country just after conclusion of a war or other disaster.” Jim Rogers, paraphrased.

And he just paraphrased the British (who had no qualms about fomenting local wars in order to buy out both sides afterwards). The early bankers caught on to that strategy back in the 1500s.

‘Royalty’ [formerly temp war chiefs] originally caught on when it was suggested by a Pope ~300AD. You can look upon "royalty" as "affinity-bankers" who concentrated & leveraged distributed affinity ties, until formal currencies become available.

Currency bankers later found that they could readily "buy out" bankrupt royalty after disastrous wars - which they therefore began to encourage. It's the simple, narrow logic of saprovores. Buy at bankruptcy sales, even if you have to help cause the bankruptcy.  The currently worst parasite is a royalty clan aligned with a banking clan.  They're just two forms of banksters, one perverting affinity operations for private gain & the other perverting currency operations.

That "Austrian Economics" approach, however, is self limiting when applied to your own aggregate - which is exactly why all stable tribal systems relegated clan & class prerogative to temporary roles, to serve transient context. The rational way to mitigate excessive investment-bank momentum is efficient democracy – i.e., full-group policy discourse. That’s exactly what we’re having trouble ramping up quickly enough. Our political institutions that barely saved us in 1933 just aren’t up to producing adequately agile policy now that we have ~3x the population throughout the G7.

Message to the Edrigus & Inigas of Spain: "We NEED ways for people to invest in better, more agile Democracy. NOW!"

Cost of coordination is always the highest cost.
Return on coordination is the ONLY return that exceeds the cost of coordination.

We either invest in making our growing populations even more agile, or we regress. I don't know how to make that more plain.

Do we want to be to a dying mass majority owned, on the way down, by the Jim Rogers' of the world?

The war of 1776, our Civil War, FDR - in fact every war, whether inter-class or inter-national - shows that an aggregate ALWAYS has more than enough firepower to overwhelm any given sub-class, regardless of whether that subclass is royalty, landowners, military or banking. For net progress, our ultimate weapons are the social catalysts that scale coordination to new levels.

Social tools are NOT social catalysts, until they're tuned to optimal use.

Just in time, just as needed communication of minimally-required information is what every "tuned" aggregate needs in order to scale up coordination - based on trust in the return on coordination.

Once they bypass all the low-margin distractions, any aggregate can focus on their insanely great return-on-coordination.

Spain needs to cross that chasm and organize - not starve, sell out & give in to British banker-fungi (yet again).

Please Spain, wake up. For the sake of everyone. The whole world is watching.