Author: Alaukika Vaishnav

In everyday life, people love prices that are out of sync with fundamentals. Homebuyers celebrate free equity when the appraisal comes in above the contracted purchase price. Thrift store shoppers look for bargains, digging through racks and bins of clothes and household goods, celebrating when they find a heavily discounted designer bag or pair of…

In a world of fiat currencies, where central banks can conjure trillions of dollars, yen, euros, or yuan out of thin air, it is more important than ever to recognize that precious metals provide important stores of value. Hence, this primer seems timely. Gold and silver have been money for thousands of years: important stores…

“The secret to investing is to figure out the value of something – and then to pay a lot less.”– Joel Greenblatt Mining is an unpopular industry and is unpopular for very valid reasons. Management teams are prone to allocate capital pro-cyclically, destroying vast amounts of capital. Governments take advantage of the fact that companies…

Mitigating portfolio risk in potentially volatile times via positive asymmetry A math-lite discussion of why optionality is advantageous. In this commentary, we juxtapose current valuations with the record high levels of risk in the economy and financial system, suggest that this fragile state of affairs requires an “antifragile” portfolio, and conclude with a discussion of…