The Market Return: Recent Episodes

McGraw Hill

Welcome to the Market Return Podcast. A finance podcast brought to you by top-selling finance book author team Ross, Westerfield, and Jordan. Think all that stuff your college Finance professor threw at you was just a bunch of equations and mumbo jumbo?  Nope.  We use this podcast to keep in touch with current and former students.  Teachers and students at other schools, and anyone interested in Finance.

View Details

Early in the year, SPACs were all the rage as a way to sidestep the IPO process. In January, 97 SPACs went public compared to 27 IPOs. In July, there were only 32 SPACs compared to 57 IPOs.

View Details

A new law being proposed in the Senate would levy a 2 percent excise tax on all funds used for share buybacks.

View Details

You can own a sports team. The Green Bay Packers are offering 300,000 shares of stock at a price of $300 per share.

View Details

Zillow has decided to abandon house flipping, laying off 25 percent of the workforce. Zillow wrote off $304 million in losses due to house flipping in the third quarter, with another $240 million to $265 million in losses to follow.

View Details

Investors have been looking for alternative investments and will be able to invest in a guitar from an alternative metal band. Gibson is using Rally to sell ownership of collectible guitars.

View Details

Early critics of the efficient market hypothesis claimed incorrectly that market efficiency meant that a monkey throwing darts at a list of stocks was just as good an investment strategy as any other.

View Details

Belize is well-known for its coral reefs and scuba diving, including the Great Blue Hole, which Jacques Cousteau called one of the five best dive sites in the world. Now, Belize may help save its coral reefs through bonds.

View Details

In 2006, Adidas purchased Reebok for about $3.8 billion. The goal was to increase the company's presence in the sneaker market to better compete with Nike. In the past several years, Adidas' sales have grown, while Reebok's sales have been poor.

View Details

If you are not familiar with a Ponzi scheme, it is generally fraud in which early investors are paid out from contributions made by later investors.

View Details

Back in December, Nasdaq approved a diversity requirement for the boards of companies listed on that exchange. Every company must have at least one female board member and one from an underrepresented minority. If a company fails to do so, it must explain in writing why it does not. 

View Details

China has recently asserted more control over private companies throughout the country.

View Details

Fidelity Investments recently hired Gilbert Haddad to head the company's decision science area.

View Details

The issuance of green muni bonds is a small part of the overall muni bond market, but the segment is growing.

View Details

We explore the dangers of negative amortization, that is when the interest paid each period is less than the interest accrued during that period. 

View Details

It is estimated that 24 million accounts containing $1.35 trillion in assets have been left in 401k accounts when someone leaves an employer.

View Details

In early 2020, COVID-19 lockdowns slowed the economy and resulted in a record dollar amount of debt being downgraded. By the end of the year, the default rate on corporate bond reached 6.8 percent. 

View Details

The COVID-19 economic downturn affected many areas of business, including working capital management.

View Details

The IPO market has been hot this year, with more than 200 offerings raising over $70 billion. Of these IPOs, 30 were Chines companies, making 248 U.S. exchange listed China-based companies totaling $2.1 trillion in market value.

View Details

If you own shares of GE, you may have noticed that the share price jumped 700 percent in one day! The reason is that GE underwent a 1-for-8 reverse stock split.

View Details

Volkswagen's Dieselgate scandal has been ongoing for the past five years. Recently, former CEO Martin Winterkorn agreed to pay the company €11.2 million ($13.7 million) in a clawback.

View Details

There have been 97 convertible bond issues totaling $54.3 billion so far this year, a record pace.

View Details

While most people are familiar with EE savings bonds, fewer are familiar with I bonds. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal highlights I bonds and the advantages of these bonds.

View Details

During 2020, a record $270 billion in green bonds were issued, and green bond issuance is on pace to surpass that record this year. 

View Details

A number of U.S. dollar LIBOR rates will be available until the end of June 2023, but can only be used for legacy contracts. 

View Details

In a recent survey by the Association for Financial Professionals, 40 percent of companies increased cash holdings in the first quarter of the year, but 34 percent of companies reduced cash holdings.

View Details

Former NBA star Allen Iverson signed an endorsement contract with Reebok back in 2001. One of the terms of the contract was that Iverson would receive $800,000 per year for the rest of his life, plus a trust fund of $32 million on his 55th birthday on June 7, 2030. Good deal?

View Details

You have heard of inflation, deflation, and stagflation. How about shrinkflation?

View Details

Many of you are probably familiar with near instantaneous money transfers using Venmo or Paypal.

How about the RTP network? 

View Details

General Electric is serious about reducing the company’s use of factoring. In 2018, the company factored about one-half of its receivables, but it expects eliminate all factoring in the near future.

View Details

Over the past decade, the company lost about $7.8 billion on its Brazilian manufacturing, or about $2,000 per car. 

View Details

SPAC issuance this year has been at a record pace, but an accounting change by the SEC appears to have slowed the market dramatically. 

View Details

So how do analysts value a stock?

View Details

Increasing demand for products in the U.S. has resulted in supply chain problems for many companies. 

View Details

The administrator of the London Interbank Offer Rate (LIBOR) has extended the termination of some tenors until mid-2023 to allow users more time to change to another reference rate. 

View Details

In our discussion of market efficiency, one trait of an efficient market is that it is difficult for investors to outperform the market.  

View Details

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal notes that banks sharply increased their loan loss reserves in 2020 in response to the pandemic. Increasing such reserves reduces a bank’s reported profit, and decreasing them improves the profit picture.  

View Details

Who are better investors, women or men? A recent interview with proprietary trader Kathy Donnelly discusses reasons why the evidence suggests that women tend to outperform men as investors. 

View Details

General Electric, with a share price of about $13 and a market capitalization of $117 billion, currently has 8.8 billion shares outstanding. 

View Details

Here’s a quick update on the return of dividends distribution for economic recovery during the COVID-19 pandemic.

View Details

Confronted with the economic hardships of COVID-19, many industries looked for new ways to sustain stability. One university offered a buyout if instructors over 70 retired by spring of 2021. With your understanding of real options, would you consider this a good idea?