The Hard Money Has Been Made
The article argues that the current market reward is "hard money" earned by investors who stuck with out‑of‑favor strategies, not "easy money" from timing the market. Since the start of 2025, foreign‑value equities have significantly outperformed the U.S. market, but capturing those gains required early entry, tolerance for prolonged underperformance, and client resilience. Those who endured the hard periods are now seeing strong returns, underscoring the difficulty of timing bottoms and the value of contrarian investing.
There Has Been a Disturbance in the Force…
Foreign and emerging‑market value stocks surged 30%‑50% in 2025 and are up another 15%‑20% year‑to‑date, prompting a subtle shift in advisor narratives. While the old mantra warned against foreign equities after a 15‑year underperformance, advisors now acknowledge the need for...
“Dividends Play No Role Whatsoever in Capital Accumulation…”
Meb Faber argues that dividends no longer drive wealth creation, noting the S&P 500’s dividend yield is slipping toward the 1.1% trough first seen in 2000. In a recent podcast with Michael Mauboussin and Kai Wu, the hosts explore how an...
How to Hedge Against a War
ManGroup proposes a dedicated WarHedge portfolio that seeks to profit from geopolitical conflict while dampening overall market risk. Over an 8,000‑day back‑test the strategy generated a 7.8% compound annual growth rate with only 5.4% volatility, compared with a 9.1% return...
3 AI Stock Winners & 3 Write-Offs – Prof. Damodaran
Professor Aswath Damodaran identified three AI‑related equities that have outperformed expectations and three that are likely to be written off. The winners—Nvidia, Microsoft and Alphabet—show strong cash‑flow generation from AI‑driven hardware, cloud services and advertising tools. The write‑offs include over‑hyped...
Emerging Market Stock Valuations
A recent analysis shows emerging market (EM) equities are trading at historically low cyclically‑adjusted price‑to‑earnings (CAPE) multiples compared with both their own history and the MSCI USA index. The valuation gap is evident across a broad set of EM countries,...
Did You Miss the Value Trade?
The latest five‑year data shows a pronounced resurgence in value investing, with a 9.0% global value premium and regional premiums ranging from 7.2% in the United States to 19.4% in Japan. Charts from Ken French’s data library and Verdad research...