All Blog Posts

April 8, 2011 by Matt McCracken
PART I: INTRODUCTION There are lies, damn lies and then there are statistics! - Mark Twain - Have you noticed that what you pay at the pump or the check-out counter seems to have little correlation with government inflation figures? Does it seem...Read more
February 4, 2011 by Matt McCracken
This morning I turned on one of the financial media stations to see what was going on in the markets and the big news was the BLS Employment Report which provided some not-so-optimistic figures. A couple analysts on the show were cackling about how...Read more
July 8, 2009 by Matt McCracken
3 They began saying to each other, “Let’s make bricks and harden them with fire.” (In this region bricks were used instead of stone, and tar was used for mortar.) 4 Then they said, “Come, let’s build a great city for ourselves with a tower that...Read more
April 20, 2009 by Matt McCracken
If you watch or read any of the financial media outlets, you've heard of the "Flattening/Inverted Yield Curve". Greenspan has referred to it as a “Conundrum” since long-bond yields have fallen while he repeatedly increases the overnight Federal...Read more
December 9, 2008 by Matt McCracken
Michael Lewis recently wrote an article appearing in Conde Nast’s Portfolio.com titled The End which details the root cause of the credit crisis and the ensuing collapse of Wall Street firms like Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch. It is a must read...Read more
July 8, 2007 by Matt McCracken
Index Investing is a strategy that consists of investing in passively-managed mutual funds and/or ETFs that are designed to mimic a particular index (i.e. S&P 500, NASDAQ 100, Russell 2000). Typically, index fund advisors use one of three fund...Read more
July 7, 2007 by Matt McCracken
There are a large number of American financial advisors who are deeply committed to the idea that MPT is one of the greatest financial innovations in investing since the creation of the equity markets themselves. I refer to these Index fund advisors...Read more
July 6, 2007 by Matt McCracken
While I believe that index investing has its merits, I do not believe that it is the only means of getting your investment compass to point true north. Advisors who buy into MPT fail to acknowledge the many issues with indexing – so allow me to...Read more
September 5, 2006 by Matt McCracken
Market inflection points (tops and bottoms) are characterized by extreme irrationality on the part of investors. At The MAC, we track several indicators that measure how “irrational” the market is being. In June, these indicators turned decidedly...Read more