Yesterday, we talked about investor optimism and how it can be measured in Price/Earnings or PE ratios.  We also discussed the application of PE ratios to stock indices such as the S&P 500 and the use of a cyclically adjusted PE ratio (CAPE) to try to measure how optimistic investors are today about stock prices … Continue reading VIX or The Price of Insurance

I don't know what stock prices will do in the future.  No one does. For quite a while, stock prices have seemed quite high to me.  In the last year, what seemed already high has gone even higher.  Most investors seem quite optimistic that publicly traded companies earnings will dramatically increase in the coming years. … Continue reading I Don’t Know

I am heading down the homestretch of Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie.  I'm curious if any of you have read it and what you thought. Twenty years ago, I read The Satanic Verses and was bowled over by Rushdie's fluent way with dialects.  It reminded me of Twain and Huck Finn. I then went through … Continue reading Midnight’s Children

PGregory Springer doesn't approve of what I do with movie reviews.  A couple days ago I wrote about Anthony Lane's review of Darren Aronofsky's Mother!  I quoted Lane's description of a silly scene of a poet plying his craft.  The "nimbus of nonsense" that Lane described confirmed my intuition that this movie was one that … Continue reading What Does A Movie Review Do?