Mauldin Newsletters

Ukraine: Three Views

2014-03-03T22:10:00+00:00

All eyes are on Ukraine as the drama continues to unfold. Today, for an early Outside the Box, I’m going to offer three sources on Ukraine. The first is a note that I got from the head of emerging-market trading at one of the world’s largest hedge funds. This is what he sent out last week, ahead of any real action: My view, Putin is stuck now, cannot easily de-escalate. Further escalation is a possibility, with Ukraine cracking along the obvious ethnic fault lines and the West reacting with...

Black Swans and Endogenous Uncertainty

2014-03-01T22:49:00+00:00

John is in Florida and feeling a bit under the weather, so this week we’re bringing back one of his most popular letters, from December 2007. In the letter he discusses the work of Professor Graciela Chichilnisky of Columbia University, one of whose key insights is that the greater the number of connections within an economic network, the more the system is at risk. Given the current macroeconomic environment, it is important to remind ourselves of how complacent we were back in 2007 and how...

World Money Analyst Update on Europe

2014-02-28T00:45:00+00:00

For the last two weeks on Thursdays we have brought you special editions of Outside the Box featuring World Money Analyst Managing Editor Kevin Brekke’s interviews with WMA contributing editors. We heard from Ankur Shah on emerging markets and Alexei Medved on Russia, and this week we wrap up the series with a frank, hard-hitting interview with Dirk Steinhoff, who covers the European and Scandinavian markets for WMA. Kevin and Dirk are both based in Switzerland, and so they lead off with a...

Buffett’s annual letter: What you can learn from my real estate investments

2014-02-26T16:41:00+00:00

It does not hurt to be reminded once in a while about what it means to be a “true investor,” and who better to remind us than Warren Buffett? Today’s Outside the Box comes to us from the pages of Fortune magazine (hat tip to my good friend Tom Romero of Capital Research Partners, who is a pretty fair investor in his own right). Fortune seems to have had the inside scoop on Mr. Buffett’s pronouncements over the years. I still keep some old Fortune magazines with interviews of Mr. Buffett to...

The Worst Ten-Letter Word

2014-02-23T16:02:00+00:00

“Inequality has emerged as a major issue in the US and beyond. A generation ago it could reasonably have been asserted that the overall growth rate of the economy was the main influence on the growth in middle-class incomes and progress in reducing poverty. This is no longer a plausible claim. “The share of income going to the top 1 per cent of earners has increased sharply. A rising share of output is going to profits. Real wages are stagnant. Family incomes have not risen as fast as...

World Money Analyst Update on Russia

2014-02-20T22:20:00+00:00

In last week's special Thursday edition of Outside the Box, World Money Analyst Managing Editor Kevin Brekke interviewed WMA contributor Ankur Shah on emerging markets, but they didn't touch on one very important emerging market: Russia. So this week I have brought Kevin back to sound out the views of Alexei Medved, WMA's Russia and CIS contributing editor. And right off the top, Alexei tells us two significant and surprising things about the Russian market: One should look at investing...

Notes to the FOMC

2014-02-19T13:09:00+00:00

Janet Yellen, the new Fed chair, has her admirers and her detractors. One unabashed admirer is my good friend David Zervos, Jefferies' chief market strategist, who during the past several months has taken to hollering "Dammit Janet, I love you!" He was at it again yesterday: Last week was certainly a week for the lovers. Q's broke to new cyclical highs, spoos moved to within just a few points of all time record highs, and Friday was St. Valentine's day! It was all about LOVE, LOVE and LOVE!...

The Economic Singularity

2014-02-15T23:18:00+00:00

I fully intended to write today about a recently released academic paper that illustrates nearly every bad idea currently being bandied about in the field of economics. The insidious part is that the paper is considered mainstream and noncontroversial. Simply reading it required me to up my blood pressure medicine dosage. It is going to take me a little longer to finish that letter, and I realized that it needs a certain setup – one that coauthor Jonathan Tepper and I conveniently wrote a few...

World Money Analyst Update on Emerging Markets

2014-02-13T19:47:00+00:00

You know that I roam the world (mostly by letting my fingers do the walking) in search of great pieces for Outside the Box. But for the next few weeks, on Thursdays, I'll be sending you special editions of Outside the Box that highlight the excellent research that is produced by our own Mauldin Economics writers and analysts. World Money Analyst is a perfect example. Led by Managing Editor Kevin Brekke, WMA features research from analysts and money managers from around the globe. Today,...

50 Reasons We’re Living Through the Greatest Period in World History

2014-02-12T12:36:00+00:00

Yesterday I had a long leisurely lunch with my longtime friend and family consigliere Toby Goodman. Leisurely except that your humble analyst was allowing a few phone calls to interrupt our precious time. “We were having lunch in this very restaurant [Piccolo Mondo in Arlington, his favorite haunt] in 1993. You remember what we were talking about?” he queried. I had to admit I didn’t, I wasn't surprised Toby did, because he remembers everything. That’s why he’s my consigliere. “I don’t...