The MercadoLibre Paradox
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Over the past five years, MercadoLibre has grown both revenue and profit dramatically — yet its stock price has gone nowhere. Could this be an opportunity?
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Insights Blog
News, insights and thought leadership from the City Different team.
The MercadoLibre Paradox
What Investing Can Teach Us About March Madness
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We've officially entered my absolute favorite time of the sports calendar year. As millions of others around the country have done this past week, I sat down to fill out my bracket for the annual Van...
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Are Treasuries Still Safe?
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Since April, I've had a lot of conversations about whether Treasuries are still a viable safe haven investment. After “Liberation Day,” 10-year Treasuries sold off by ~50 basis points, creating a...
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How Boutique Fixed Income Looks Different
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Fixed income is one of those corners of investing where process matters a lot more than people realize. On the surface, many strategies appear similar. Same benchmarks. Same sectors. Same language...
Are Treasuries Still Safe?
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Since April, I've had a lot of conversations about whether Treasuries are still a viable safe haven investment. After “Liberation Day,” 10-year Treasuries sold off by ~50 basis points, creating a...
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Ladder Strategy Supremacy (by the numbers)
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Most fixed income conversations spend a lot of time on what to own (e.g. credit quality, duration, sector exposure) and not nearly enough time on how the portfolio is put together. But structure...
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Other Signs of the Apocalypse
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No one likes an alarmist know-it-all (except maybe the folks riding Michael Burry’s coattails through the 2008 financial collapse… but even a lot of those folks thought he had lost his mind). I know...
Is the Market Rhyming with 2008?
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I’ve been feeling uneasy about financial markets lately… not because I think we’re headed for a carbon copy of 2008, but because a few old patterns are starting to bubble back up. Not in the same...
What's That Junk Bond Worth Really?
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There’s a line from the movie The Last Boy Scout that’s always stuck with me: "Water's wet, the sky is blue..." (gunna add my own spin on it here) ... and market risks, Jimmy, they’re out there and...
Informed Investor: Total Return
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Why we focus on ‘total return’ (and what that means for your portfolio) When evaluating the performance of our strategies from our fixed income desk, we focus on total return. In our view, it’s the...
Fear is not an Investment Strategy
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“If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you...” Rudyard Kipling Yesterday, I noticed Warren Buffet was in the press quoting this Kipling piece, one of my...
Your Bond Questions, Answered
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When we’re chatting with clients, we often get the same flavor of questions about bonds (we would bet if you have exposure to the bond market, you’ve wondered some of these as well…). So we wanted to...
Vanguard's Fee Cuts
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Vanguard just dropped the hammer on ETF fees again, slashing its average expense ratio to a jaw-dropping 0.07%. That’s a big deal in an industry segment where “fees are one of the most important...
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Understanding the Muni Bond “Threat”
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Every few years, it seems like the municipal bond market can’t resist a good scare story. This time, it’s the potential for Congress to alter the tax-exempt status of muni bonds — an idea making the...
Wednesday's Distress
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Explaining Wednesday’s complete market route. All markets, be they equity or fixed income, took a proverbial kick in the shorts on Wednesday. The S&P 500 index finished the day 178.45 points lower...
4 Years of Inflation Analysis
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Given Trump’s upcoming policy guidance, there are reasons to believe that inflation could soon be on the rise. This begs the question, “Are we in a temporary inflation lull? To answer that, let’s...
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What is Active Management in Fixed Income?
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We believe that a strategic, actively managed approach to fixed income investing often outperforms the alternative. You might be familiar with active management when it comes to equities, but what...
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CDI's Active Management Philosophy
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Much as truly active equity investing can result in greater returns for investors (even net of fees), so too can active management of fixed income securities. We’re big believers in the power of...
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Trade Execution
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A decade ago, fixed income trade analysis was like a country club — very few people had access to it, the asymmetry of information was staggering, and so much of the market was effectively word of...
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Why Bonds Now
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We think it’s a good time to buy bonds because: The markets’ irrational exuberance about rate cuts in 2024 has been exercised. We started the year expecting 6-7 rate cuts, which dwindled to 2-3 in...
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Mutual Fund Outflows
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Separately Managed Accounts (SMAs) have grown from 3% of the total Municipal Market to approximately 23% market share in the last decade (as of 3/31/2023). Mutual funds, on the other hand, make up...
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Is Bigger Always Better?
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Size can have its advantages — when going with a bigger firm; you may be hoping to experience lower fees because of volume and scale. But, it can also leave many advisors feeling like a “drop in the...
Penalty Kicks and Fixed Income
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“Don't fight the Fed” — it’s an adage for a reason, and it’s one we believe in. Why? Because history has mostly demonstrated the Federal Reserve, with its monetary policy tools, is overwhelmingly...
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The Old Normal
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Last week, the Fed announced that it would not raise the Fed Funds rate in September. By our way of thinking, though, they left the door open for future increases (data dependent). This left us...
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It's a Great Time for Muni Bonds
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We have long written about the two periods when the municipal bond market organically generates the most cash flow into the market — the January / February period and the June / July period. These...
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Fixed Income as a Service
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Companies have been rethinking how they do business across industries, geographies, etc. Remote vs. hybrid vs. in-office, fractional executives, outsourcing, you name it. But we think a huge change...