SnoQap

Feb 15

Feb 15 What’s Behind the Sudden Rush of Sales of Sports Teams?

While attempting to buy an NFL team, Bobby Axelrod, the imperfect protagonist of the popular HBO TV series ‘Billions’ opined that “Sports franchises are how we knight people in this country.” While the series somehow manages to dramatize the already sensational world of hedge funds and high finance, the observation from Axelrod is a poignant one; ownership of sports franchises is America’s closest comparable to knighthood in the United Kingdom. With the lofty societal status assigned to owners of professional sports franchises, the reasoning for parting with such as asset is not always apparent.

Feb 9

Feb 9 Fixed Foreign Exchange Rate Regime

Vincent Z. Yu

Finance

There are two major types of foreign exchange regimes: fixed exchange rate policy and floating. As its literal meaning on appearance, a fixed exchange rate is a regime in which a country’s currency exchange rate is tied to the currency of another country or the price of gold. A floating exchange rate policy, instead, gives the currency a much wider range to float without predominant regulatory control. The price of a particular currency in this scenario is almost purely driven by the relative supply and demand of the currency in the foreign exchange market. We will define the exchange rate in our discussion as the rate at which a domestic currency can be converted to one unit of U.S. Dollar, the value of which is assumed unchanged, we will now proceed with our discussion of the fixed-rate system.

Nov 19

Nov 19 The January Effect

Samuel Jaffe

Investing

In the world of investing, the basic questions investors want to know are, “Where should I put my money?” and “When should I invest?”. Within the financial world, entire departments inside banks, and even non-financial companies, are devoted to answering these two questions. Having the answers to these questions can yield significant returns on investment, and so firms put a great deal of time, money and effort into solving them. Not too long ago, the answer to the question of “when to invest?” may have had an answer. For decades investors observed an oddity in the market that reduced risk but occurred repeatedly. Unfortunately, it is largely believed this phenomenon no longer exists in our markets today. Despite this, it is still interesting to delve into the intricacies of such a lasting event.

Apr 2

Apr 2 Fixed Foreign Exchange Rate Regime

Vincent Z. Yu

Finance

There are two major types of foreign exchange regimes: fixed exchange rate policy and floating. As its literal meaning on appearance, a fixed exchange rate is a regime in which a country’s currency exchange rate is tied to the currency of another country or the price of gold. A floating exchange rate policy, instead, gives the currency a much wider range to float without predominant regulatory control. The price of a particular currency in this scenario is almost purely driven by the relative supply and demand of the currency in the foreign exchange market. We will define the exchange rate in our discussion as the rate at which a domestic currency can be converted to one unit of U.S. Dollar, the value of which is assumed unchanged, we will now proceed with our discussion of the fixed-rate system.