Efficient? Chaotic? What’s the New Finance? By Nancy A. Nichols
This article is an analysis of the transition from traditional to modern finance. The author begins by discussing how traditional finance was based on the idea of equilibrium and that it was efficient. However, modern finance has replaced it, focusing on risk management and uncertainty. She notes that finance is amid a paradigm shift (Nichols, 1993). The old model, rooted in efficient market theory, is out, and the new model is based on chaos theory. In this way, she argues that traditional financial models are simplistic, while new ones are more complex and valuable. She uses examples from economics to illustrate her point.
The author argues that traditional models do not work well because they ignore human behavior and emotion. She believes that conventional models are inadequate when applied to complex problems like markets or economies because they ignore these critical factors in favor of an idealized view of economic behavior. The author then discusses how modern finance began with a focus on optimizing portfolios but has since evolved into a field where individuals are encouraged to take risks to maximize returns. Modern finance has also shifted from primarily analytical to more empirical and experimental. In addition, Nichols argues that finance needs advanced models that consider more than just traditional inputs like interest rate changes or market indexes.
The author provides several examples of how these changes have affected financial markets and individuals within them. She suggests that we need a more efficient and less chaotic system that can account for human behavior. His solution is to create a market where people can trade their financial information, allowing them to make better decisions based on what other people are doing. She concludes by stating that many issues still need to be worked out before people can fully understand what will happen next in this industry.
A Better Way to Rate Bonds by John Sviokla
This article discusses the need for a new method of bond rating to keep up with the current market conditions. He presents a new way to rate bonds that will help investors make better financial decisions while benefiting both the companies that issue the bonds and the organizations that buy them. The author explains that traditional bond rating systems are ineffective in determining bonds’ riskiness (Sviokla, 2009). It is because conventional bond rating systems do not consider their ability to repay the loan but the company’s overall performance and financial stability. However, this can be problematic because companies may perform well but still be unable to pay back their loans if they have too many outstanding debts or liabilities.
The author also discusses how certain types of bonds should be rated differently than others due to their unique characteristics and how they affect their ability or inability to pay back their debts. For example, mortgage-backed securities should be treated differently than corporate bonds. They tend to have less risk than corporate bonds because they are backed by real estate assets instead of just financial assets like stocks or bonds.
In addition, the author explores the idea of using accounting metrics and financial ratios as a way to get more accurate bond ratings. He claims that bond rating agencies are too reliant on credit history and other subjective factors when assigning bond ratings. They should instead look at cash flow, debt levels, earnings, and growth potential to offer more accurate ratings. However, the author misses an opportunity to explain precisely how these new metrics could be applied, making it easier for readers to understand what they are talking about. The article also does not detail how these metrics would be calculated or what kind of data would need to be collected for them to work effectively.
Does the Capital Asset Pricing Model Work? By David W. Mullins, Jr.
This article briefly analyzes how well the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) works. The author notes that while it can be helpful, its usefulness is limited to certain situations and that other models are more useful in different situations. The CAPM is a theoretical framework for analyzing the connection between investment risk and expected return (Mullins, 1982). The idea behind the model is that investors will demand higher expected returns on investments with higher volatility up to a point. The author does not dispute this general idea but rather points out that there are several different versions of the CAPM, each with different assumptions and conclusions about what factors affect risk and how they do so.
The main criticism of the CAPM is that it assumes investors can ideally diversify their portfolios. They can purchase an investment with no correlation with any additional investment they own. The author suggests that this assumption might lead some investors to underestimate the value of diversification in their portfolios and therefore invest too highly in risky assets without adequately considering their exposure to those risks.
The CAPM is also criticized because it presumes that the risk-free rate of return on bonds represents of the risk-free rate on all equities. This assumption is called market efficiency, which means markets efficiently allocate resources and correct price assets. If this were true, all investors would agree on an asset’s value, so there would be no opportunity for speculation or arbitrage, which would mean that the price of an investment would equal its intrinsic value. Mullins’s article addresses these criticisms by arguing that the CAPM works well as long as there is a large amount of diversification in investments, so individual assets cannot be easily separated from each other. He suggests that this condition is met when many different asset classes are available for investment.
The Dark Side of Efficient Markets by Roger L. Martin
This article is well-written and makes an essential point about how we think about markets and innovation. The author argues that it is a mistake to assume that markets are efficient and should not be regulated. He argues that the efficient market hypothesis is wrong and has dangerous consequences for innovation. He further points out that unregulated financial markets often lead to disastrous results. For example, he cites the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s, when investors became overly optimistic about internet companies and poured billions into them (Martin, 2014). Many of these companies were never profitable and were eventually shut down.
Martin also points out that many financial institutions make risky investments with the expectation that they will be bailed out when their bets go bad. When this happens, he argues, it creates a moral hazard—the idea that if you do not have to worry about losing money on risky investments, you will take more risks than you would otherwise. It can lead to market instability and even more significant losses for everyone involved.
Martin believes that regulation is necessary to prevent these problems from happening again in the future. He suggests several ways this could be done: creating new rules for rating agencies, requiring investment banks to hold more capital, and requiring hedge funds to register with regulators to better track of them.
I agree with Martin’s argument: indeed, markets are not always completely efficient, and there are times when they fail the consumers and investors. However, I do not think his solution is viable. If people force companies into investing in research and development based on criteria other than what the market says is profitable, they would need an alternative system to determine how much resources should be invested in each project.
Is the Stock Market Accurately Valuing Your Company? By Dambisa Moyo
In this article, Dambisa Moyo discusses five trends colliding to distort how markets are pricing companies. The first trend the author discusses is low-interest rates (Moyo, 2021). She says that this has led investors to try to find better returns elsewhere, including in high-risk assets like stocks and real estate. It can lead to bubbles forming in those markets and cause prices to rise dramatically until they eventually burst, causing losses for many investors who bought at the top of the market during this bubble period.
The second trend is the rise of passive investing. Passive investors are not looking for profits but for consistently rising stock prices. In her search for consistent growth, passive investors have begun to favor companies with high-profit margins and low debt over those with low-profit margins and high debt. This means that many companies are being overvalued by the market when they should be undervalued because passive investors do not understand why some companies make more money than others or what those differences mean for their future performance. Passive investing can lead to bubbles forming around specific sectors or industries, distorting real value in those sectors and industries.
She further discusses the trend of economic nationalism. She says governments worldwide are intervening in markets and encouraging domestic investment over foreign investment because they want to protect local jobs and industries from foreign competition (Moyo, 2021). It can result in less efficient economies because countries are no longer competing fairly with one another. Overall, I found this article to be a compelling look at how the global economy is changing and that is affects how the stock market values companies. The author strongly argues that investors should consider these changes when deciding where they put their money.
References
Martin, R. L. (2014). Finance & Accounting: The Dark Side of Efficient Markets. Harvard Business Review.
Moyo, D. (2021). Financial Markets: Is the Stock Market Accurately Valuing Your Company? Harvard Business Review.
Mullins, D. W. (1982). Does the Capital Asset Pricing Model Work? Harvard Business Review.
Nichols, N. A. (1993). Efficient? Chaotic? What’s the new finance? Harvard Business Review, 71(2), 50-56.
Sviokla, J. (2009). Finance & Accounting: A Better Way to Rate Bonds. Harvard Business Review.