December 13, 2012

Simple Arithmetic

Andrew Redleaf founded Whitebox Advisors in the late 1990s after a career at Deephaven and trading options at the CBOE.  In addition to managing private and public funds, the team at Whitebox maintains a great website called Whitebox Selected Research […]
December 9, 2012

Volatility Based TAA

If you are not following Wes Gray and his writing you are missing out.  He churns out more research on quant strategies, stock picking, and investment theory than just about anyone I know.  He runs a few websites (in addition […]
December 4, 2012

Macro Views

I am in Phoenix and Tucson this week, drop me a line if you’re around! A couple pieces from Ian Shepherdson at Pantheon Macro: —- “Fears over the fiscal cliff do not explain the slowing in capex; it’s mostly about slowing […]
December 2, 2012

The New Ab(Normal)

Do you read a newsletter or have come across something incredibly interesting or useful lately?  Please shoot me an email at mebane@theideafarm.com to let us know! This week has a great read from Saumil Parikh over at PIMCO who examines […]
November 29, 2012

Attractive Stocks Under $10

The Bespoke Investment Group is one of my favorite blogs.  If you are like me, and love to see data in chat and tabular form then their site is a treasure trove of information.  They have both a free and premiuim […]
November 26, 2012

Forecasting Stock Returns

Before we get to this week’s piece some quick housekeeping.  Many readers are not aware that we archive all of the old emails and newsletters on The Idea Farm website. and for those on Facebook you can follow/like us here: […]
November 11, 2012

The Green Book

I look forward to The Leuthold Group’s publication Perception for the Professional (also known as The Green Book) every month.  If it is not my #1 favorite read per month it is definitely in the top 3.  It is jam packed with […]
November 8, 2012

Some Simple Tricks to Boost Momentum Performance

In this piece Societe Generale looks at ways to improve upon price momentum screens for selecting stocks and avoid the massive drawdowns of 2009. From the piece: —- “Macro news has been dominating stock prices and is likely to continue […]
November 5, 2012

The $130,000 Idea Challenge

I’ve done a number of posts on my blog World Beta that detail all of the investment contests that award over $200,000 in prizes for white papers on investing. It is interesting to see a new contest that is offering $130,000 to […]
November 3, 2012

Sell Apple and Long Greek & Spanish Banks?

This issue of The Idea Farm comes to us from the good folks at Morninstar, who publish a magazine called Morningstar Advisor.  In this issue Paul Justice interviews Rob Arnott and Cliff Asness, two titans of the investment world. An […]
November 1, 2012

European Stock Ideas

We hope you are enjoying our emails – if you have any suggestions of letters or research to include please email us and let us know. Also, if you are enjoying the emails please feel free to pass along to […]
October 29, 2012

Investing in Disasters, Hurricane Edition

Today’s report is a timely one as Hurricane Sandy bears down on our friends on the eastern seaboard (we’re thinking about you, please be safe!).  Investing in, and hedging out, natural disaster risks has always been a fascination to me. […]
October 28, 2012

Improving on Risk Parity

We hope you are enjoying our emails – if you have any suggestions of letters or research to include please email us and let us know. Also, if you are enjoying the emails please feel free to pass along to […]
October 25, 2012

Counter Trend Trading

We hope you are enjoying our emails – if you have any suggestions of letters or research to include please email us and let us know. Also, if you are enjoying the emails please feel free to pass along to […]
October 23, 2012

Tactical Playbook

This week’s report looks to uncover opportunities that may lie hidden in the short-term noise. In this issue we include research from Waverly Advisors out of Corning, NY.  Waverly blends macro, quant, fundamentals, and real world derivatives experience to come […]