Favouring the specific over the general; Tinkoff and Washington Prime Group

In markets, there is a frequent biasing of the general over the specific, and it is a recurring source of opportunity for investors that are prepared to set aside preconceived notions; dig a little deeper; and favour the specific over the general in their investment process.

Does money make you happy?

It's an age-old question, and is one that is usually answered a lot less well than it should be. As is usually the case for questions like this, the truth is much more complicated than a simple yes or no answer, and I hope to shed a little bit of light on the issue below.

Expedia and dodgy accounting

I took a quick look at Expedia (EXPE US) last night (yes, this is indeed how I like to spend many of my Saturday evenings). Expedia is one of the world's largest online travel agents (OTAs), and owns a bunch of lodging platform websites you've probably heard of/used - both its namesake expedia.com, as well as hotels.com, Travelocity, Orbitz, Wotif, and HomeAway, as well as air ticket, rental car, and cruise ticket booking operations, and travel media site Trivago. The company's primary competitor is Priceline (owner of booking.com and various other sites), as well as - to a lesser extent - AirBnB and TripAdvisor.

Life expectancy and the cost of capital

It is popular in many financial circles to compare the level of asset prices (which is the inverse of the cost of capital) to 100-year market valuation averages (or sometimes even longer - I heard some hyperbole the other day that asset prices were at '2,000 year highs').

Bargain stocks in HK/China; no-brainer investing; and Dongfeng Motor

Despite the putative universal overvaluation of global equity markets at present (although the current correction, which Jim Grant would describe as the 'value restoration project', is starting to mitigate that), there are still in fact a large number of extraordinary bargains to be had for the industrious stock-picker. One just has to be prepared to look a little harder for them, in unusual and out-of-favour corners of the market. Obvious bargains have disappeared; non-obvious bargains have not.

Some thought's on the market's recent volatility

It's been a eventful week for markets. After a long period of subdued volatility and steady (and accelerating) gains, global markets suffered a pronounced setback, led by the S&P, which fell 7% in two trading days. Global markets followed, as did oil and commodity prices, while emerging market currencies fell and safe-haven currencies such as the Yen and USD rallied. The selling was indiscriminate, with everything dropping in unison, with few places (on the long side) to hide. What is going on, and how should investors be responding to it?