The US equity market may now be moving into a new phase dominated by massive arbitrage between the value of equities with and without stock buybacks. As described in the article “US Equities: Wildly Over-Priced or a Great Bargain?“, the half-trillion dollar annual buyback craze that rules American equities has caused a gap to open between […]

Over the last twenty years, stock exchanges have morphed into a new type of institution: the ‘demutualized exchange’. The position and power of stockbrokers — once the ‘masters of the investment universe’ — has been significantly lessened. “Demutualization” is the process by which a stock exchange is transformed from the traditional configuration of a broker-owned, […]

On January 22,2007, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Democratic Senator Charles Schumer released a report purchased by the New York City Economic Development Corp. from McKinsey & Co., for about $500,000, saying that Sarbanes-Oxley corporate governance, internal controls, and class action lawsuits by investors should be curbed — according to a Wall Street Journal […]