Martin Kronicle

I met Glenn Yago at the Milken Global Conference and he was nice enough to give me a copy of his book, Financing the Future, which he wrote with Franklin Allen.

Yago Moderated a fantastic panel called Do Our Financial Models Still Work? that featured Aaron Brown of AQR, Stacy-Marie Ishmael of FT, Myron Scholes, Colin Camerer of Cal Tech, and Bruce Tuckman of the Center for Financial Stability.

Here is the full two-part interview which I had to break up because of its size.

Glenn Yago MartinKronicle Interview Part 1 from Michael Martin.

Glenn Yago MartinKronicle Interview Part 2 from Michael Martin.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

John Authers has written a great book called The Fearful Rise of Markets: Global Bubbles, Synchronized Meltdowns, and How To Prevent Them in the Future and he took some time last week to speak with me about the book.

Authers is a long-time investment columnist. He now runs the Lex column for the Financial Times and is quoted all over the place. He was honored by State Street Institutional Press Awards as the UK’s Investment Journalist of the Year for his coverage of confidence in investment theory.

Here is the blog post by John Kemp on Cash and Carry that I mentioned in the podcast.

I wrote something similar back on February 4 called Oil Barges Coming Ashore that deals with Cash and Carry also.

I consider reading Michael Mauboussin a great privilege.

Here is a pdf he sent me recently called Untangling Skill and Luck.

Excerpt:

For almost two centuries, Spain has hosted an enormously popular Christmas lottery. Based on payout, it is the biggest lottery in the world and nearly all Spaniards play. In the mid 1970s, a man sought a ticket with the last two digits ending in 48. He found a ticket, bought it, and then won the lottery. When asked why he was so intent on finding that number, he replied, “I dreamed of the number seven for seven straight nights. And 7 times 7 is 48.”

If you missed it, I recorded a great podcast with Mauboussin on the heels of his great book Think Twice.

“…hey, one last thing. I’ve got an appointment on Melrose and Intel is announcing after the close,” she said. “Do me a favor and text me if there is any big news…please?”

“Okay, if I think about it. I thought you puked that up when it started selling off?”

“Nooooo. It’s Intel. I’m holding that sucker. It’s in the DOW.”

“What’s your basis?”

“23 something,” she said with her voice trailing off.

“Ah, so you bought it on a pullback, right after it put the highs in?”

“Yes.”

[I'm thinking to myself, that was a good short entry, but not to buy it long for crice sake.]

About 20 minutes pass, and I decide to check INTC in the aftermarket for my friend.

sms: “Street likes the numbers. I’m stepping out. LT was 22.69 – liquidate while you can.”

[As it turns out, the market never held. A weak Retail Sales number one day and an Unemployment number took the starch out of what everyone was hoping was going to be an INTC-led rally.]

I’ve had this conversation 10,000 times with Retail folks who try their hand at stock picking. The person in this particular conversation does over $800k in gross commissions regularly.

True story. I swear.

George M. Steinbrenner III (1930- 2010)

Thank you Mr. Steinbrenner for fielding the the best baseball teams over the course of my life that the world has ever known. It’s truly been a Yankee Universe.

Here is The Boss interviewed by who I regard as the best journalist ever – Ed Bradley – for 60 Minutes. Notice the date is one day before Black Monday in 1987.

“When you put the pinstripes on your not just putting a baseball uniform on. Your wearing Tradition and you’re wearing Pride and your going to wear it the right way.”