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The Economic Paradoxes of Contemporary Art

Posted on July 28, 2008 by Felix

Don Thompson has written, by far, the best book on the economics of the contemporary art market yet written. It might seem like a narrow area, not enough to get a book out of – yet after wolfing down these … Continue reading →

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Signing Off

Posted on July 17, 2008 by Felix

Just in time to avoid the aftermath of the dreadful Merrill results, I’m off on holiday. (Although it’s worth noting that the shares "sinking" 9% in after-hours trade only brings them back to where they closed yesterday.) There won’t be … Continue reading →

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Managing Your Online Reputation

Posted on July 9, 2008 by Felix

Kate Murphy has found a chap called Kent Campbell who, for between $500 and $10,000 per month, will try to make sure that the first page of search results, when someone Googles your name, will include lots of nice positive … Continue reading →

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Blogonomics: Gawker’s Latest Pay Cut

Posted on July 3, 2008 by Felix

Choire Sicha has the latest update on Gawker’s payroll, and it’s pretty ugly. Gawker writers get paid per pageview, remember, and that pay, as of the beginning of Q3, has fallen by 23%, from $6.50 to $5.00 per thousand pageviews. … Continue reading →

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Defragging the CDS Market

Posted on July 2, 2008 by Felix

You know when you’ve had a computer for a long time, and the hard drive is full of crap, and some tech wizard comes up with a way of defragging it or something, and the idea is that suddenly it’ll … Continue reading →

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The Politics of Hurricane Insurance

Posted on July 1, 2008 by Felix

MP McQueen has a front-page WSJ article today attacking property insurers for, um, well, it’s not entirely clear what they’re supposed to have done wrong. Apparently they use something called "computerized catastrophe modeling": Crafted by several independent firms and used … Continue reading →

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When Pundits Discover the Repo Market

Posted on June 30, 2008 by Felix

If you want to get a good idea of the disconnect between politics and the markets, try looking across the pond, to Will Hutton’s 1200-word jeremiad against hedge funds. Hutton is a highly respected political commentator, but he clearly knows … Continue reading →

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Error, Randomness, and Payrolls Statistics

Posted on June 28, 2008 by Felix

Just how error-prone are the monthly payrolls statistics? I’ve been reading Len Mlodinow’s very good new book, The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, and one of his statements really stood out for me: if you have a data … Continue reading →

Posted in economics, statistics | 1 Comment

The $11 Million Goncharova

Posted on June 25, 2008 by Felix

Christie’s had a blow-out sale last night, selling $284.5 million of art in its Impressionist and Modern sale in London. That’s an eye-popping figure, since Impressionist and Modern sales have been a little bit out of favor of late (the … Continue reading →

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Why Female Academics Don’t Appear on Op-Ed Pages

Posted on June 25, 2008 by Felix

Tyler Cowen, in conversation with Wil Wilkinson, says that most people massively overestimate the probability that their beliefs are true. Robin Hanson provides a transcript: Take whatever your political beliefs happen to be. Obviously the view you hold you think … Continue reading →

Posted in Media | 2 Comments

More on Technical Analysis

Posted on June 24, 2008 by Felix

It seems I hit a nerve yesterday: 26 comments and counting here, as well as 18 over at Seeking Alpha, and quite a few more chez Ritholtz both yesterday and today; Barry Ritholtz also has a more formal response here. … Continue reading →

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Annals of Crap Research, M&A Leaks Edition

Posted on June 23, 2008 by Felix

You might recall that about three weeks ago, there was a mini-spate of articles about how leaks imperil M&A deals. Here’s a typical one, from CFO.com (not to pick on them in particular, there were many others). Here’s how it … Continue reading →

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Schrodinger’s Option

Posted on June 13, 2008 by Felix

Have you ever wondered why hedge funds love to hire mathematics and physics PhDs? Maybe this post, and this follow-up, might help explain. It turns out that the Black-Scholes PDE (that’s partial differential equation, of course) is basically – um, … Continue reading →

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The Million Dollar Active vs Passive Wager

Posted on June 9, 2008 by Felix

Warren Buffett has a 10-year, $1 million bet with some fund-of-funds managers: he reckons that his investment in Vanguard’s S&P 500 index fund will outperform their portfolio of five fund-of-funds. It’s a pretty standard active vs passive bet, albeit for … Continue reading →

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The Sorry Story of Jefferson County’s Sewer Bonds

Posted on June 5, 2008 by Felix

One of Andrew Clavell’s best posts is the one where he was giving advice, retrospectively, to a Pennsylvania school board which was being sold swaptions by investment bankers: Admitting you don’t know is pure alpha; you will not claim to … Continue reading →

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Want a Cheaper Mortgage? Talk to People!

Posted on June 4, 2008 by Felix

Harvard’s Cassi Pittman has written a heartbreaking paper detailing the results of a series of interviews with black homebuyers in Atlanta. It turns out that if you want to know whether someone’s likely to have taken out an unsuitable or … Continue reading →

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Should Citi Cut its Dividend?

Posted on May 28, 2008 by Felix

Holman Jenkins has a most peculiar column today which seemingly tries to defend Citigroup’s decision to continue paying dividends, even as it’s raising billions of dollars of capital elsewhere. Except he never quite comes out and says that Citi is … Continue reading →

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CDS Counterparty Risk and the Bear Stearns Bailout

Posted on May 20, 2008 by Felix

Jesse Eisinger points me to David Evans’s 4,400-word article on credit default swaps; he likes it a lot. Me, not so much. If it were shorter, it wouldn’t bother me so much. But if you’re writing at that sort of … Continue reading →

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The Cheap Pennsylvania Turnpike

Posted on May 20, 2008 by Felix

What kind of effect has the credit crunch had on the formerly-frothy market for infrastructure investments? As money becomes scarcer, the price tags attached to future-cashflow investments like toll roads would normally go down. But there was always another possibility: … Continue reading →

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Gesture Politics Done Right

Posted on May 18, 2008 by Felix

Bryan Caplan famously defended the economically-illiterate McCain-Clinton plan to suspend federal gas taxes on the grounds that it was the least bad way for Congress "to show the voters that it feels their pain". At a cost of just $9 … Continue reading →

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Art: The Last Unburst Bubble

Posted on May 15, 2008 by Felix

Christie’s sale on Tuesday night was a stunning success, ratifying the ridiculous levels to which contemporary art has soared in recent years. The Sotheby’s sale on Wednesday night, by contrast, took the market to a whole new level. Not only … Continue reading →

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Contemporary Art: As Strong as Ever

Posted on May 14, 2008 by Felix

Bursting art bubble? What bursting art bubble? The Christie’s sale last night looked for all the world as though it was taking place at the height of the party: not only did it bring in a very impressive $348 million, … Continue reading →

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Extra Credit, Monday Edition

Posted on May 12, 2008 by Felix

Calling oil wrong: Futures prices bear no relation to future prices. Let’s not write the Fed a blank check: Why not? Isn’t that precisely what a central bank should have? So much for the efficient markets hypothesis: Bad results, rising … Continue reading →

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Extra Credit, Thursday Edition

Posted on May 8, 2008 by Felix

Raiders of the Lost Arc Elasticity, Part I, Part II, Part III: Robert Jensen finds the elusive Giffen good, with important results. "When we subsidized the price of rice and wheat, people consumed less of them, not more. And in … Continue reading →

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Extra Credit, Tuesday Bonus Edition

Posted on May 6, 2008 by Felix

TAF: Below Discount Rate Mannered Results: How have Eddie Lampert’s non-Sears investments done over the past year? How the Housing Bust Is Boosting Newspapers: ‘Foreclosure notices are filling in where condo sales and auto deals once held sway. "There are … Continue reading →

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