Hints and tips:
...It probably just doesn’t matter, from the point of view of long-term returns, whether you own Berkshire or the S&P. Why, then, should Berkshire exist?...
...In contrast, the S&P 500’s price-to-book ratio is close to the record 5 times it touched in 2021 and 2000 (the Nasdaq’s P/B ratio is close to 7.5 times)....
...No matter how you cut and slice the index, whether you include megacap technology names or not, the S&P 500 is expensive relative to history. That rarely ends well....
...However, there is a limit to how much this matters. $400bln of AUM is less than 1% of the SPX’s market cap, and the delta swings are far smaller....
...The company is in a reputational crisis. This C-suite shake-up should be welcomed....
...The S&P 500 as a whole has a weighted average P/E of 26, reflecting the higher valuations of larger companies in the index....
...Last year, the price of the median property in Singapore outstripped that of Hong Kong. Real estate still matters greatly in Hong Kong....
...“Hinkley Point C is not a government project and so any additional costs or schedule overruns are the responsibility of EDF and its partners and in no way will fall on taxpayers,” it said....
...“Their names and faces are unknown to most of the press and the public. Berkshire’s line-up of managers, however, is to P/C insurance what Cooperstown’s honorees are to baseball.”...
...From S&P’s definitions: A short-term obligation rated ‘D’ is in default or in breach of an imputed promise....
...In the case of the McKinsey report published in 2020, the main study gathered data about diversity on the boards and in the C-suites of more than 1,000 large global companies....
...S&P this month downgraded Thames Water’s top-ranked class A debt to BBB-, the bottom rung of investment-grade, just one notch above junk....
...The S&P 500 is not yet quite as expensive as it was in the zero-rate, fiscal bonanza, everyone-has-loads-of-cash glory days of 2021. But it is getting closer....
...The S&P 500 is within a per cent or two of taking out the all-time high it set in late 2021. Most bond funds are likely to end the year with gains, too....
...A Harvard Business Review analysis from 2021 estimated that bad chief executive and C-suite successions wiped out $1tn in market value from the S&P 1500 a year....
...The company has generated at least $1bn in net trading revenue in each of the past 14 quarters, according to people familiar with the matter....
...This matters particularly in the US, as these roles are increasingly a stepping stone to the CEO position....
...Chart from S&P Global, through September: Part of the reason for this is that companies are making money....
...the matter....
...So long as the stalemate persists, there are only three things that can happen that will matter to investors: (a) Russian nuclear escalation, (b) the end of western support for Ukraine, or (c) Russian regime...
...in cash or (c) spend cash buying shares from the public to limit dilution....
...It’s day two of the annual conference for the International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners EMEA, and the C-suite attendees are taking part in a group meditation....
...First, using data provided by the great Howard Silverblatt of S&P Indices, here is a chart of the year-over-year change in dollars spent on buybacks by companies in the S&P 500 index, plotted against the...
...The company’s triple C plus credit rating is one of the lowest assigned by the big rating agencies, with analysts at S&P Global warning its upcoming debt maturities “present significant refinancing risk”...
...Some of the groups Panmure identifies as likely to benefit are recognisable names. Alliance Pharma, M&C Saatchi and YouGov all fall in this zone. But it’s not only about individual companies....
International Edition