Musings on Markets

FEBRUARY 8, 2025

I spend most of my time in the far less rarefied air of corporate finance and valuation, where businesses try to decide what projects to invest in, and investors attempt to estimate business value. A key tool in both endeavors is a hurdle rate a rate of return that you determine as your required return for business and investment decisions.

Hurdle Rate 72

Hurdle Rate Valuation Corporate Finance Currencies 72

CFO News Room

JANUARY 7, 2023

Data: Trickle to a Flood! It is perhaps a reflection of my age that I remember when getting data to do corporate financial analysis or valuation was a chore. By the same token, it is impossible to use a pricing metric (PE or EV to EBITDA), without a sense of the cross sectional distribution of that metric at the time.

Marketing 130

Marketing Valuation Corporate Finance Financial Analysis 130

Musings on Markets

AUGUST 15, 2023

After the rating downgrade, my mailbox was inundated with questions of what this action meant for investing, in general, and for corporate finance and valuation practice, in particular, and this post is my attempt to answer them all with one post. and the reverse will occur, when risk-free rates drop.

Investments 98

Investments Currencies Treasury Hurdle Rate 98

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 6, 2023

It is perhaps a reflection of my age that I remember when getting data to do corporate financial analysis or valuation was a chore. Thus, without a sense of what comprises a high or low profit margin for a firm, or what the cost of capital is for the typical company, it is easy to create "fairy tale" valuations and analyses.

Valuation 52

Valuation Corporate Finance Financial Analysis Leverage 52

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 9, 2021

To illustrate, consider a practice in valuation, where analysts are trained to add a small cap premium to discount rates for smaller companies, on the intuition that they are riskier than larger companies. Data Update 4 for 2021: The Hurdle Rate Question. Data Update 2 for 2021: The Price of Risk!

Valuation 52

Valuation Currencies Numbers Corporate Finance 52

Musings on Markets

JANUARY 5, 2024

That year, I computed these industry-level statistics for five variables that I found myself using repeatedly in my valuations, and once I had them, I could not think of a good reason to keep them secret. Valuation Pricing Growth & Reinvestment Profitability Risk Multiple s 1. Insider, CEO & Institutional holdings 2.

Valuation 105

Valuation Financial Analysis Analyzing Data Profit and Loss 105

Musings on Markets

JULY 25, 2023

My suggestion is that for countries where recent political or economic events would lead you to believe that sovereign rating is dated, you should switch to using sovereign CDS spreads. The disadvantage is that they are focused on just default risk, and do not explicitly factor in the other risks that we enumerated in the last section.

Currencies 52

Currencies Hurdle Rate Valuation Marketing 52