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I'm a (for now anonymous) manager of a long-short fund which is not open to external investors. I have extensive experience on Wall Street and in the technology industry. I look for strong trends and reasonable valuations (GARP?), particularly in the technology and media sectors. Recently, for... More

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Demographic Trends - A Guide for Investors
The global demographic time-bomb and its impact on the markets
The demographic impact in individual countries
The demographic impact on specific sectors
The demographic impact on individual companies
People worth reading on demographics for investors
- Beacon Asset Managers
The Harry Dent ETF (DENT)
- Articles about the DENT ETF
- ETF Home page
Tracking new developments and articles
Please let me know if there are any other articles I should include by leaving a comment below.
Tags: DENT, ECH, EPI, EWM, EWS, AAPL, SWKS, WMT, demographics

Oct 24 5:17 AM | Link | 2 Comments
Position Your Portfolio for Inflation or Deflation? Here's the Definitive Answer.

From an interview with Zvi Brodie, Professor of Finance and Economics at Boston University School of Management:

Say you were talking to a 60- or 65-year old investor and they were to ask what scenario they should be most concerned about – inflation, a double-dip recession, or the market crashing further. What would your answer be?
My answer would be that you always want to look at several scenarios, and then try to assign probabilities to them. One of the mistakes that a lot of analysts make is to consider only one scenario. You hear this all the time on television in an interview with someone who is bullish, and then someone else who is bearish. How do they possibly know? Why aren't they considering probabilities?
Let's take inflation as an example. We've had this tremendous run-up in government debt in the United States and everywhere in the world. Some people are saying that's going to have to be monetized. That means we’re going to have runaway inflation or at least very high rates of inflation in the next few years. Prominent analysts are saying that. Then the next guy or woman makes the case for why, because we've had such a severe recession, we're going to have prolonged unemployment. It's going to be like Japan, with a long period of deflation.
I don't know about you, but I think both of those things are possible. I wouldn't go with either one of them as the most likely scenario. In fact, I probably would average them out and say we are going to have inflation that’s somewhere in the middle, but there is a high degree of uncertainty about it.
That is the spirit that a risk manager brings. That's the essence of risk. It constantly amazes me that people in the finance field who study markets and have seen in the past how wrong their forecasts can be, as recently as the last decade, still make point forecasts of the future with absolute certainty and great confidence. It seems nuts to me.

Tags: TIP, WIP, TIPZ, IEF, LTPZ, GLD, IAU, GDX, GDXJ, TYD, PLSDF.PK, deflation, inflation

Aug 10 11:39 AM | Link | Comment!
Why I Wish I Could Short Denmark
Here are some shocking stats from an NYT article describing Denmark's welfare system and the stagnation it's causing:
- Public expenditure that last year surpassed 59 percent of G.D.P.
- Public-sector debt is equal to 42 percent of G.D.P.
- Denmark has the highest overall tax burden of all O.E.C.D. member countries, with taxes to G.D.P. reaching 48.2 percent in 2009.
- Denmark has one of the highest marginal tax rates for high earners — 67 percent — when consumer taxes are included.
- In 2010 the percentage of the adult population living entirely off transfer income — whether it be welfare, student checks or state retirement funds — is at 43.2 percent.
Now the punch line:

"According to O.E.C.D. data, over the last decade the Danish economy has experienced one of the slowest growth rates in the 30-country group. Looking forward to 2025, the O.E.C.D. estimates that Denmark will have the second-slowest growth rate, ahead of only Japan."

Unfortunately, there's no Denmark ETF to short. The closest thing is Europe (IEV), or the Euro monetary zone (EZU).

Pity.

Tags: IEV, EZU, FEU, FEZ, Denmark

Jul 30 4:58 AM | Link | Comment!

View Hedged In's Instablogs on:

Demographic Trends - A Guide for Investors

Position Your Portfolio for Inflation or Deflation? Here's the Definitive Answer.

Why I Wish I Could Short Denmark

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