The Big Short is a hilarious yet highly informative movie. I would highly suggest watching it if you haven’t seen it yet. It does a great job at explaining the convoluted network of events that resulted in the 2008 economic collapse, while somehow keeping you entertained. In this article, we will take a closer look at some of the themes that were explored in the movie.

Shady things were going on in the financial industry leading up to the crisis

Low-grade mortgages were being packaged together into securities that, somehow, were determined to be exceptionally safe investments by rating agencies. Banks and investment managers loaded up on these securities, while at the same time…

(Not intended to be investment advice.)

For a long time, low beta stocks outperformed high beta ones. Financial market observers dubbed this the Low Beta (or Low Vol) Anomaly.

In this post (and a future one), I will take a look at this anomaly as well as its recent reversal. But first, let’s first talk about the background a bit. So why should we expect high beta stocks to outperform low beta stocks?

CAPM

CAPM (Capital Asset Pricing Model) is basically every MBA’s favorite equation — it’s used all over Wall Street and in many corporation’s finance departments as well.

In…

The 2008 Financial Crisis was a defining moment in my investment experience. I was just starting my career then (I was in business school at the time). When Lehman (anyone remember them?) went down, it felt like the world as we knew it was ending.

It’s hard to imagine right now, but back then there was the real threat of bank runs and financial system collapse.

It was also when non-traditional monetary policy tools like QE (Quantitative Easing) were first widely introduced because interest rates hit zero at a time when the economy still needed stimulating.

For me, 2008 was…

(Not intended to be investment advice. Please do your own due diligence prior to investing.)

Ioften write about investing and sometimes hint at the stocks I own, so I figured I might as well just be completely transparent.

I want to be clear — I am not recommending any of these stocks. Keep in mind that many of these stocks I have owned for years, and the valuations and catalysts that attracted me to them then may be in shorter supply today. …

(Heads up — this story is not finance or investing related.)

If this is already widely known, then I apologize.

I have not eaten a Costco croissant since I was in college. As a college student, my friends and I used to by two boxes of croissants, two boxes of Chicken Bakes, and a bag of taquitos every time we went to Costco. Variety was not a spice in our life at that point in time.

I got so sick of those three things that since graduating college, I have not touched the Costco variety of them.