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...
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...
Postcard From The UK
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Jong recently traveled to the UK with his family over Easter. And because he can never stop thinking about investing, below he describes how a trip that started out as a soccer fan’s pilgrimage to...
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...
The Deep Seek AI Shockwave
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This week, a surprising announcement from China’s Deep Seek sparked a lot of market chatter (and, ya know, vaporized nearly $600B in market value from Nvidia). Deep Seek claims it developed an...
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...
Postcard From Brazil
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City Different Investments is known for finding compelling opportunities that may lie off the beaten path of Wall Street. Last week we caught up with our intrepid portfolio manager Vin Walden, on the...
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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...
Wall Street Transcript Interview
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Vin Walden recently sat down with the Wall Street Transcript to discuss potential dangers lurking in the stock market. Find out which companies he thinks investors should avoid. Electric Cars and AI...
Hidden Value Stocks Feature
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Excerpt from Hidden Value Stock Newsletter: Connor Browne and Rob MacDonald are two of the co-founders of City Different Investments. Both serve as portfolio managers, and Browne runs the firm....
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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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Investing in a Changing Climate
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U.S. homeowners are facing the dual challenges of more frequent weather events as well as disappearing property insurance. One company has been steadfast in insuring coastal properties in Florida for...
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Investing Tips from Beer-League Hockey
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Investing can be demanding. It can require some serious brain power… but more importantly, it’s a battle within yourself. It doesn’t matter how smart you are if you’re too emotional or too biased to...
Decrease Volatility by Embracing it
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In my last blog post, I talked about how “thinking like an endowment trustee” can provide a real advantage to both financial advisors as well as retail investors when thinking through your investing...
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Adding SMAs to Your Clients' Portfolios
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Serving Registered Independent Advisors (RIAs) is at the heart of what we do at CDI. Numerous RIA partners have come to us wanting to either incorporate or diversify their clients’ portfolios (more...