The forces. Not the headlines.
Analysis and commentary on markets, companies, and the forces that move them.
How Emerging Market Index Weights Are Set
Country weights in emerging market indices direct hundreds of billions of dollars. Those weights come from a specific set of technical rules that the people relying on them rarely examine.
The Investability Question in China
A clear gap exists between the size of China's economy and the weight its equities carry in global indices. The gap arises from a set of technical and institutional conditions, and understanding them is more useful than assessing any single event.
India: Scale, Valuation and Access
India's weight in global indices rose substantially over the past decade. Its scale, valuation levels and the conditions facing foreign investors form a set of interrelated characteristics.
The Korea Discount: Governance and Structure
Korean equities have long traded below markets at comparable levels of economic development, a phenomenon with its own name. Its causes have been widely studied, and most explanations point towards governance and ownership structure.
Taiwan: Market Concentration and Global Linkage
Taiwan's weight in global equity market value is modest while its sector concentration ranks among the highest of any major market. That structure determines its volatility characteristics and what it moves with.
Where the European Discount Comes From
European equities have long traded at lower valuation multiples than United States equities, and the gap widened across the past two decades. Part of it is structural and part is arithmetic arising from composition.
Japan: Thirty Years and Governance Reform
Japanese equities spent three decades below their nineteen eighty-nine peak. Among the changes of recent years, corporate governance reform is one of the few with a structural character.
The Blurring Line Between Developed and Emerging Markets
The developed and emerging classification directs trillions in allocation. The gap between the criteria behind it and present reality has widened across the past two decades.
How Currency Eats or Amplifies Foreign Returns
The return on a foreign asset has two components: what the asset did, and what its currency did against the investor's own. The second is frequently large enough to dominate the result.
The Long-Run Record Outside the United States
United States equities delivered among the strongest returns of any major market across the past century. Using that record to infer the long-run characteristics of markets generally runs into several structural problems.
The Gap Between Global Market Weights and What Investors Actually Hold
The distribution of world equity market value is a verifiable fact. What most investors actually hold sits a long way from it, and the direction of the gap is the same in nearly every country.
Paper Losses and Realised Losses
The same sum of money carries a different psychological weight on paper from the weight it carries once realised. The difference has no economic basis and influences decisions with great consistency.
Why Investors Remember the Calls They Got Right
Memory preserves forecasts selectively. Correct forecasts come with clear cues for recall. Incorrect ones lack any occasion that would bring them back to mind.
The Two Forms of Fear of Missing Out
Fear of missing out is usually described as an urge to buy into something. Its more common form appears in people who already hold the asset, and it is far better disguised.
How Echo Chambers Harden Mistaken Views
Hearing the same argument repeatedly registers in the mind as independent evidence accumulating. Where the repetitions originate from a single source, the confidence that accumulates has nothing underneath it.
Why Information Consumption Spikes During Declines
Readership of market information peaks during declines. The quality of market information reaches its low point across the same stretch. The coincidence in timing is no accident.
Position Size and Emotional Intensity
Doubling a position does not double the emotional response. The response stays nearly flat below a certain threshold and rises sharply above it, and that threshold varies by person and is seldom measured.
How Investors Rewrite Their Own Expectations
Memory works by reconstruction rather than storage. Every act of recall quietly revises the original expectation in line with what is now known. The process requires no intention to deceive.
How a Narrative Replaces Analysis
A good story travels through a market far faster than a good analysis. The reason has little to do with diligence. Stories possess two properties analysis lacks: they survive retelling intact, and they can shed their conditions.
The Overweighting of Expert Opinion
How reliable professional judgement turns out to be depends on what kind of feedback a field provides. Markets supply feedback that is slow, noisy and frequently misleading, which changes how experience accumulates there.
How Losing Positions Get Reclassified as Long-Term Investments
The holding period for a given position is rarely settled at the moment of purchase. Far more often it is established retrospectively, once the position has moved against its owner.
Anchoring to Your Cost Basis
The cost basis carries less information about an asset than almost any other number in a portfolio, and is looked at more often than almost any of them. That contradiction explains a great many otherwise puzzling decisions.
What Actually Triggers Panic Selling
Panic selling is usually attributed to the size of a decline. Observed behaviour suggests the trigger is more often how long the decline lasts than how deep it goes.
Everyone Endorses Long-Term Holding. Almost Nobody Practises It.
Long-term holding enjoys wider agreement than almost any other principle in investing, and a lower rate of practice than almost any other. The gap is not a failure of knowledge. It is built into the way the principle is stated.