B. DYSON CAPITAL ADVISORS

Years ago, on a Sunday morning flight home to San Francisco from LA, I opened a new novel I’d been looking forward to: 𝘈 𝘔𝘢𝘱 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥 by Jane Hamilton. I started to read and then sat for a while with the book open on my lap. A woman across the aisle noticed the…

David Dredge of Convex Strategies describes how downside risk control improves the long-term compounding of portfolio returns through the same dynamics of risk, braking, acceleration, and survival that determine who wins a Formula One race. I find it applies to capital structures as well. As Dredge puts it: “The most important thing on the car…

I clipped this out and kept it, stuck in my file of old cartoons, 39 years ago. Why keep it for so long? Rates had fallen from 14% to 7% over the prior five years. Now they were rising again. The desk took it as confirmation that the move down had been the head fake….

Most are still positioned like it isn’t because they don’t believe it. When I started on an arbitrage desk in the early 80s, rates had been steadily rising for almost 40 years. I worked with guys with scars and stories from the 60s and 70s. They traded with the muscle memory that any move down…

The Last Time The 20s Roared We all know what’s driving today’s record stock valuations.Innovation, and of course, AI. But what drove valuations the last time they reached levels almost as extreme as today’s? The chart below shows John Hussman’s stock market capitalization relative to corporate output. We have been here once before. It was…

The terms specified the American children of the lenders would be repaid by the Japanese children of the borrowers. “Dwight W. Morrow, formerly of the house of J. P. Morgan and Company, international bankers; then Ambassador to Mexico, later United States Senator, once counted the foreign bonds listed in a daily bond table in a…

“Tiger, one day you will come to a fork in the road,” he said. “And you’re going to have to make a decision about which direction you want to go.” He raised his hand and pointed. “If you go that way you can be somebody.You will have to make compromises and you will have to…

In the closing scene of 1954’s classic On the Waterfront, Charley tells his brother Terry, played by Marlon Brando, that the tragedy of his boxing career came from bad management and bad breaks. Terry pushes back. You were my brother, Charley.You should’ve taken care of me a little bit, so I wouldn’t have to take…

“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed…”– Arthur Schopenhauer (attributed) Any challenge to an established power triggers opposition. It is natural. It is expected. It has always been. Machiavelli noted 500 years ago that the reformer has enemies in all who profit by the old order. One…

“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed…”– Arthur Schopenhauer (attributed) After oil collapsed in 2018, Nabors Industries was overburdened with debt. Many peers filed for bankruptcy; others incurred massive dilution through conventional debt-for-equity swaps and liability management exercises. But the CEO, who owned a large stake, refused to dilute out his shareholders…

A broker recommends a small, thinly traded stock. It goes up. The client is happy. “Buy a little more,” says the broker. It goes up again. And again. Each time, they buy more. Months later, the client owns a mountain of stock. The price has soared. Feeling brilliant, he calls the broker. “Let’s sell and…