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I recently joined a professional organization to discuss various topics in wealth management. On our first Zoom call there was a debate around the use of levered long/short strategies. For the uninitiated, a levered long/short strategy is a way of taking market risk (like buying an index fund) while generating tax losses to offset capital gains (now or in the future). The leverage is what's…
Europe is outperforming – but Europeans aren’t participating
Musings on Markets — Aswath Damodaran·It is undeniable technology companies have found their most hospitable setting in the United States and while there are many reasons for the US dominance of technology, easier access to capital for young businesses has been a key ingredient. Venture capital in the US, in its institutional and organized form, can trace its roots back to the 1950s, and over the last few decades, it has generated…
When I was 27 years old I was at a crossroads. I was five years into my career, yet I was stagnating. Though I was making six figures, which was great for my 20s, I knew I couldn't make much more at my job. Without an advanced degree, my future compensation would be an endless chain of 3% annual "cost of living" adjustments and nothing more. At that moment, I knew I had to make a change. So I…
Situational Awareness and Amaranth 20 Years Apart
Musings on Markets — Aswath Damodaran·I am a creature of habit in my personal and professional life, and in the context of the content that I post online, there is a ritual that I follow with my data updates. I start the year with my general data update online, and follow up with a series of posts where I examine the implications of this data for investing and corporate finance. Since 2008, I have also done annual update papers on…
How the National Stock Exchange of India built the world’s busiest equity derivatives market
Musings on Markets — Aswath Damodaran·Over the last few weeks, attention has (rightly) been focused on three potentially trillion dollar companies all lined up to go public, and much of the discussion has been about what SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI are worth (and will be priced at). In parallel, there has been a debate about indices and index inclusion criteria, a usually bland topic, but one that has become heated on the questions…
Musings on Markets — Aswath Damodaran·A few weeks ago, I assessed the value of SpaceX ahead of its initial public offering, with the admission that I was making my estimates with drabs of data, some of it coming from unofficial sources. I also promised to revisit my valuation, when the prospectus came out, and now that it has, I will examine how the information it contains has changed my view of the company and its valuation. I will…
Musings on Markets — Aswath Damodaran·Through time, we have glorified conquerors and empire builders in politics, civic life and business, from Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan to the tech titans of today. That is no surprise, since these individuals have oversized personas and often change the course of history, but it is also true that this glorification of empire building has shortcomings. The first is the deification of…
Musings on Markets — Aswath Damodaran·Markets play an expectations game, and in March 2026, we saw the process play out, with all of its upsides and downsides. The month started with a war in the Middle East, which quickly percolated into soaring oil prices and dropping stock prices, but the overwhelming factor was uncertainty about almost every dimension of the war - how long it would last, what permanent changes to oil prices…
Musings on Markets — Aswath Damodaran·When uncertainty roils markets, as is the case right now, it is natural for investors to get knocked off balance, a when off-balance, to make investment decisions that they often regret later. It is during those times that it helps to have a core set of beliefs about markets, and an investment philosophy that reflects those beliefs. You may not be able to mend the damage to your portfolio, but…
Musings on Markets — Aswath Damodaran·I start my valuation classes with a question of whether valuation is an art or a science, and I argue that it is neither; it does not have the precision that characterizes a science and unlike an art, it does come with principles that constrain you on what you can and cannot do. I describe valuation as a craft, where you learn as you value companies, and in the process, there are times where you…
Musings on Markets — Aswath Damodaran·In the data update posts this year, I have wended my way from the macro (equities collectives, the bond market and other asset classes) to the micro, starting with hurdle rates and returns in posts five and six and the debt/equity choice in my seventh post. In this post, I will look at the decision by businesses on how much cash to return to their owners, and in what form (dividends or…
Musings on Markets — Aswath Damodaran·In my fifth data update, I examined hurdle rates in 2025, and in my sixth data update, I looked at the profitability and return metrics for firms. Both hurdle rates and profitability metricsmcan be affected by how much debt companies choose to have in their financing structure, and it enters explicitly into my cost of capital calculations, both through the costs of equity/debt and the mix of the…
Musings on Markets — Aswath Damodaran·Crass and mercantile though this may sound, the end game for a business is to make money, and a business that fails this simple test cannot survive for long, no matter how noble its social mission, how great its products and how much it is loved by its customers and employees. In this post, I start with a defense of this mercantile objective, and argue that attempts to expand it to incorporate…
Musings on Markets — Aswath Damodaran·If you have read my first three data updates in 2026, I won’t blame you if you skip this one, because you found them long and boring. I won't take issue with you either if you viewed them as too US-focused, because I did spend my second data update, looking at US equities, and my third, examining US treasuries and the US dollar. In this post, I widen my data analysis to look at the rest of the…
Musings on Markets — Aswath Damodaran·It was a disquieting year , as political and economic news stories shook the foundations of the post-war economic order, built around global trade and the US dollar. In fact, if you had been read just the news all through the year, and were shielded from financial markets, and been asked what stocks did during the year, you would have guessed, based on the news, that they had a bad year. You…
I've been thinking about this for some time. After 21 years of writing this blog almost daily, I've decided to stop writing the daily updates on the blog. However, the economic data "IV" is still in my arm, and I'll be writing a weekly economic summary at the end of each week (via a newsletter - see below). This will have three parts: the Schedule of economic data for the following week, a…
Weekend: Schedule for Week of January 11, 2026 Pre-Market Data and Bloomberg futures S&P 500 futures are down 16 and DOW futures are down 104 (fair value). WTI futures at $59.37 per barrel and Brent at $63.60 per barrel. A year ago, WTI was at $77, and Brent was at $80 - so WTI oil prices are down about 24% year-over-year. Here is a graph from Gasbuddy.com for nationwide gasoline prices…
Hotel occupancy was weak in 2025. It is difficult to tell early in the year because travel is always weak in early January. From STR: U.S. hotel results for week ending 3 January The U.S. hotel industry reported positive year-over-year comparisons, according to CoStar’s latest data through 3 January. ... 28 December 2025 through 3 January 2026 (percentage change from comparable week in 2024 and…
Today, in the Calculated Risk Real Estate Newsletter: The "Home ATM" Mostly Closed in Q3 A brief excerpt: During the housing bubble, many homeowners borrowed heavily against their perceived home equity - jokingly calling it the “Home ATM” - and this contributed to the subsequent housing bust, since so many homeowners had negative equity in their homes when house prices declined. Here is the…
Today, in the Calculated Risk Real Estate Newsletter: Housing Starts Decreased to 1.246 million Annual Rate in October A brief excerpt: Note: The Census Bureau is still catching up. They released Start data for September and October today, but we are still missing November data. The third graph shows the month-to-month comparison for total starts between 2024 (blue) and 2025 (red). Total starts…