Author: Yuval Taylor

In 2016, the analyst, teacher, writer, and researcher Michael J. Mauboussin published a white paper called “Thirty Years: Reflections on the Ten Attributes of Great Investors.” In it, he outlines “the top ten attributes” that he believes “great fundamental investors share.” When I read it, I had to take a…

Transaction costs for most stock investors and traders can be broken down into two categories: commissions and slippage. Commissions are fees that brokers charge to implement trades; slippage is the difference between the price as listed and the price you actually pay. Slippage, in turn, can be broken down into…

Seeking Alpha, a website I write for, asked me a number of questions so that I could make the answers into an "investment strategy statement." I published it there a few days ago; I thought I'd publish it on my blog here as well. My Investment Focus I am a…

Just after New Year, an amazing paper was posted on SSRN called “Selling Fast and Buying Slow: Heuristics and Trading Performance of Institutional Investors.” A few days later, Matt Levine, who writes daily for Bloomberg and whom I read almost religiously, published a terrific column about it called “Investors Have…

When I lived in Bolivia a few years ago I noticed some market behavior that I’d never seen before. In the central market, all the vendors got together and set their prices, which they posted for the public to see. There were two bus companies in Sucre, and they charged…

Just after New Year, an amazing paper was posted on SSRN called “Selling Fast and Buying Slow: Heuristics and Trading Performance of Institutional Investors.” A few days later, Matt Levine, who writes daily for Bloomberg and whom I read almost religiously, published a terrific column about it called “Investors Have…

The Global Industry Classification Standards (GICS) classify industries into eleven different sectors, and do so on a purely intuitive rather than a data-driven basis. But once you look past that intuitive level, the sectors make no sense. What do Cigna and Amgen have in common, really? Yes, they’re both in…

A value trap is a relatively cheap stock whose price simply doesn’t rise no matter how long you hold it. I’ve done a research study of factors that might characterize value traps, and here are the ones that I think provide the best warning signs. After going through these factors,…

Here’s a dialogue between two sides of myself: Moses, who’s a proponent of market timing and tactical asset allocation (TAA), and Celeste, who thinks it’s bunk. Moses: What is the difference between trading, tactical asset allocation, and market timing? In all three cases you’re buying and selling assets that are…

I spend a lot of time creating and refining ranking systems for stocks. My entire system of investing/trading is based on systems that take a universe of stocks and rank them from lowest to highest based on various factors. Using these systems to buy and sell microcaps, I've been able…