At some point during the great housing bubble of the last decade, financial alchemists met over beers to solve an intractable problem. Decades earlier, they had perfected the art of taking mortgages, pooling them into mortgage backed securities and selling them to pension funds, insurance companies and other mindless institutional investors. These funds would always buy the senior tranches that were almost bulletproof, but Read More

Last week, I had the great fortune to finish reading The Frackers by Gregory Zuckerman, which I highly recommend to anyone with even a cursory interest in the history of fracking in America. Essentially, it is the story of a handful of outcast wildcatters who were convinced that there was a way to extract oil and gas from shale that had previously been written off as Read More

Founded in 1727 by Benjamin Franklin, the Leather Apron Club was a club for mutual improvement whose purpose was to debate questions of morals, politics, philosophy, and business affairs. Dear Fellow Adventurers, Over the course of the week, I am fortunate to read hundreds of articles and watch dozens of great videos–many of which are forwarded to me by close friends and AIC readers. Read More

They call it the widow maker for a reason. For as long as I have been in finance, every sane Western finance guy has marveled at the ability of the Japanese Yen to continue to levitate. Repeatedly, investors have tried to short the Yen and been run over. It is unforgiving and it is relentless and it simply defies reason. To summarize the problems Read More

This is a repeat (slightly edited) of a piece I posted on May 6, 2010. It’s as valid now as any other time after a bad loss. There are good days, there are bad days and there are awful days. Yesterday was a debacle. Almost everything our fund owns was down. Some positions were down more than ten percent. Even worse, we stopped out Read More

When investing in former colonies, remember the golden rule; colonies take after their parents. What this means is that French colonies have decent food, but cannot be invested in. Spanish and Portuguese colonies have decade-long cycles of boom and chaotic bust. If you can time these cycles, you can make fortunes. However, English colonies are where your money should be—especially when one of these Read More

Much has been written about hyperinflation. However, since most of us have never had to live with it (yet), we really don’t think much of it. Given that Ben Bernanke seems to think that Zimbabwean central banker Gideon Gono was onto something with his plan to print deflation away, it may be useful to look a bit at the hyperinflation that Zimbabwe went through. Read More

This post is the poor-man’s way of adding Fibrek to the ‘Postitions Mentioned’ tab. Website development guys are expensive….. Sorry for the inconvenience. The original post was What Happens When 4 Billion People Decide To Use Tissue?   Disclosure: My investment partnership owns shares of Fibrek International. We may buy or sell shares without further notice. Categories: Positions Mentioned: FBK.to To receive email updates on new posts, Read More