Author: Damien Lanyon

There is a lot of talk about efficient markets of late. Not 100% what that means exactly… Somehow the stock market is supposed to be an efficient market where all participants have access to the same information, so therefore there is no ability to make more return than the market. But how does that explain...

Before the COVID 19 crises the Federal Budget deficit for 2020 was forecast to be $1.1T, so far $2T of stimulus has been approved with more to come. This has lead to the Federal Debt to explode to $25T with more to come… GDP is around $21T so we are easily over 100% Debt/GDP ratio....

I have been on a lot of earnings calls and partnership updates from many of our investments the last week. Here are some of the notes that I have taken that struck me as interesting. “Home Depot number of store visitors were down 4%, average order up 11%” “Online grocery sales up 5X since the...

Price is important in investing. I think it is important in two occasions – the day you buy and the day you sell. Between those two days a lot can happen. That’s why it’s important to remeber that a stock is a share of a company in an ongoing enterprise (hopefully) I am trying to...

The global economy is highly complex and integrated. A decision made in isolation can often have wide ranging and “unexpected” consequences. The current trade and tariff war is just such an example. The US has for a long time trade deficits. These aren’t bad, they are not one country taking advantage of another. As the...

Talking to a lot of investment sponsors and “opinionated” investors, I’m often times struck by how binary their decision making process is. Their “idea/product” is the greatest idea in the known universe and you would be stupid not to put all your money into it. Always a choice between A or B. Why does this...

The last few weeks I have been to a couple of conferences. The first was an LP meeting with Social Leverage – an early stage VC firm, the second a presentation from Art Laffer, the renowned supply side economist. The juxtaposition between these two events was profound. The Social Leverage conference was a bunch of...

It’s interesting living here in San Diego.  It’s not a secret that is has desirable weather and a strong, diversified economy.  The dilemma is that it is essentially land locked and many people want to come and enjoy the sunshine.  Well except on days when it rains like today (OMG no one knows how to...

With so much Social Media around, I’m not sure if all the rhetoric that gets produced has always been there, or is it now just so much noisier because of all the platforms that it can be broadcast on. The problem with so much noise is that it is becoming more and more difficult to...

When investing it’s important to remember that two things impact the value of an investment – the amount that it is earning and how much people are willing to pay for it. When considering the stock market – the Earnings per Share (EPS) are easily understood and reported. The multiple or what people are willing...