Max Osbon's Posts

Warren Buffett hosted his final Berkshire Hathaway meeting as CEO this past weekend. Here are some thoughts and takeaways from listening to the 94 year old Oracle of Omaha. Currencies “That’s the big thing we worry about with the United States currency. The tendency of a government to want to debase its currency over time – there’s no system that…

Private v Public Debate Bloomberg columnist Matt Levine published a great commentary this week on the ongoing public vs private market tension. The punchline is, “And if an increasing share of the economy — and particularly of the fastest-growing and most valuable firms — is in private assets, investors can’t just index. You can’t get “the market return” by buying…

Continued Volatility The Financial Times had a headline this week, “Private equity goes risk off as it pauses dealmaking.” This period in markets is somewhat reminiscent of COVID shutdown, but to a much lesser degree of course. Businesses cannot build reliable financial models without policy clarity. I wouldn’t call this period “risk off” as much as I would call it…

Quick Notes – Reflections From This Week   Public + Private The equity market is more or less unchanged from one week ago despite falling over -12% over a few days and recovering the entire drop in a single day. Yesterday was one of largest single day rallies in over 15 years. As enthralling as that was, it’s not a…

It’s difficult to analyze the new tariff data when it is likely to change again in the near future. Trump’s Liberation Day tariff speech focused on a 10% general tariff and a series of reciprocal tariffs. Despite the supposed clarity of the numbers shown on the tariff chart, there are still many unanswered questions. We don’t know all of the…

There is a big difference between markets falling under stress from a single clear variable vs risk spread across many different narratives. It is worse to have a market focused on a single variable, like rapid rate hikes to cool inflation in ‘22 or the onset of Covid. Today there are many negative narratives in markets. The reversal of globalization,…

Volatility This most recent market correction (10% decline) was one of the fastest in S&P 500 history at just twenty days. The Covid “correction” was eight days and the ‘growth scare’ in 2018 was thirteen days. Rapid market declines like these are most often related to panic selling or forced selling. Panics can’t last forever by definition. Of course this…

When Trump and Secretary of The Treasury Scott Bessent talk about reducing rates or rates that need to come down, they are referring to the 10 year Treasury rate more than the short term rate that the Fed sets. As a quick refresher, the Federal Reserve meets eight times per year to adjust short term interest rates. By comparison, market…