Macro Call! Gulf Coast Refiners Entering a Golden Age
The evolution of new horizontal drilling and fracking techniques has revolutionized production of oil in the U.S. The huge volume of light sweet production coming [...]
About David Foulke
David Foulke is an operations manager at Tradingfront, Inc., a provider of automated digital wealth management solutions. Previously, he was at Alpha Architect, where he focused on business development, firm operations, and blogging on quantitative investing and finance topics. Prior to Alpha Architect, he was involved in investing and strategy at Pardee Resources Company, a manager of natural resource and renewable assets. Prior to Pardee, he worked in investment banking and capital markets roles at several firms in the financial services industry, including Houlihan Lokey, GE Capital and Burnham Financial. He also founded two internet companies, E-lingo, and Stonelocator. Mr. Foulke received an M.B.A. from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and an A.B. from Dartmouth College.Is Volatility for Misguided Geeks?
Warren Buffett doesn’t like it when people use volatility to measure risk. He succinctly describes his criticism: We bought The Washington Post Company at a [...]
So what exactly is a “bubble” anyway?
In the aftermath of the financial crisis, the term “bubble” has come into wide use in the financial press. The stock market bubble: The leveraged [...]
Financial News: Satisfying Your Need for Coherence
“Wall Street dips after data clouds view on Fed” was a headline from Reuters today. Sounds good, right? Think again. Daniel Kahneman, in his book, [...]
Pensions and the Tragedy of the Flypaper Effect
Arthur Okun showed that "money sticks where it hits," just a flies do to flypaper. Almost everyone has used flypaper from time to time. If [...]
Seth Klarman, Micron Technologies, and Risk Targeting
When Seth Klarman invests, people pay close attention. As the founder of the Baupost Group, which reportedly manages $28 billion, he has earned his reputation as as an [...]
High Frequency Trading is great for society!
Last week we transcribed some key sections from Jim Simons 2010 talk at MIT, “Mathematics, Common Sense, and Good Luck: My Life and Careers.” We transcribed [...]
Thales–The World’s First Option Trader?
The Greek philosopher Aristotle (348 BC - 322 BC) was a renowned polymath, who studied everything that could be studied at the time. He is [...]
Secret Sauce: Jim Simons on Life and Building a Business
Jim Simons, the founder of Renaissance Technologies, gave in 2010 a fascinating talk at MIT entitled, “Mathematics, Common Sense, and Good Luck: My Life and [...]
Focus on What You Can Get for Free: Part 2/2
It always pays to focus on what you can get for free, but this is especially true for investing. In this Part 2 of our "Focus [...]
Black Friday, Retailers and the Availability Heuristic
The term “Black Friday” has been used for many years to describe the day after Thanksgiving, which for retailers marks the beginning of the holiday [...]
Focus on What You Can Get for Free: Part 1/2
Milton Friedman famously opined that “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” We beg to disagree. For all of us trying to compound [...]
Black Box Investing Versus Common Sense Quant
Quantitative investing has developed an unjustified PR problem based on the unfortunate tendency of many to associate all quantitative approaches with “Black Box” investing. The [...]
Economic Moat: A Look Back in Time
Warren Buffett once observed: In business, I look for economic castles protected by unbreachable moats. Here at Turnkey we have written extensively about economic moats, [...]
John Maynard Keynes–The Original Warren Buffett
In the current era of aggressive fiscal stimulus and loose monetary policy following the financial crisis, John Maynard Keynes is often invoked as a forefather [...]
Goldman Sachs’ Warehouse Trade–Conspiracy Theory!
If you love a good Goldman Sachs conspiracy theory, we’ve got a candidate for you... Our story begins back in 2003, when the Fed allowed [...]
Mean Regression and the Value Anomaly
For many investors, it is an article of faith that value investing is the best approach to investing in public equities. Value investors, who are [...]
Book Review: “The Manual of Ideas,” by John Mihaljevic
The “Manual of Ideas” is a popular investing newsletter aimed at generating investment ideas by highlighting and discussing a handful of companies every month. Over [...]
Recommending the Trend: a Behavioral Basis for Momentum Strategies
As many investors know, Eugene Fama developed the efficient-market hypothesis (EMH) at the University of Chicago in the 60s, and it subsequently flourished across academia. [...]
Indian Rupee in Freefall!
As the Indian Rupee hit a fresh all-time low today against the US dollar, we wondered about the factors that could have caused this recent [...]