Intellectual Finance Team

The CFO’s Secret Weapon: How to Inflate EBITDA Without Breaking the Law

Corporate Finance, Investing

Every CFO knows the feeling. You’re sitting in a board meeting, and someone asks about EBITDA. The number sits there on the slide, stubbornly refusing to be impressive. You know your business is performing better than this metric suggests, but explaining why requires a PowerPoint deck and a minor in accounting. Here’s the uncomfortable truth: […]

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The Anti-Gravity Strategy- Staying Green While the S&P 500 Falls 30% (Market Neutral Strategy)

The Anti-Gravity Strategy: Staying Green While the S&P 500 Falls 30% (Market Neutral Strategy)

Market Neutral Strategy, Investing

When Isaac Newton watched an apple fall, he discovered gravity. When traders watch portfolios fall, they discover margin calls. The difference between these two discoveries is that gravity was inevitable, while portfolio losses are optional. Most investors treat market crashes like weather events. They huddle inside, wait for the storm to pass, and hope their

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Game Theory on Wall Street: Modeling the Moves of Your Competitors (Quantitative Analysis)

Quantitative Analysis, Game Theory

Every trader believes they’re playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers. The reality is messier. Financial markets operate more like a crowded poker room where everyone’s trying to read everyone else’s tells, except half the players are algorithms that don’t sweat or fidget, and the other half are convinced they’ve found a system. This

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The Hedging Hierarchy- Covered Calls vs. Puts as Your Primary Portfolio Defense

The Hedging Hierarchy: Covered Calls vs. Puts as Your Primary Portfolio Defense

Hedging, Investing

Most investors approach portfolio protection the way most people approach health insurance. They know they need it, they understand it costs money, and they hope never to use it. But here’s where the analogy breaks down in an interesting way. When it comes to protecting your investments, you’re not just choosing between different insurance policies.

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The Prestige Bias: Why We Overvalue Brands We Recognize in Comparable Company Analysis

Comparable Company Analysis, Analysis & Valuation

There’s a peculiar ritual that plays out in conference rooms across the financial world. An analyst presents a valuation model, and somewhere in the deck sits a page titled “Comparable Company Analysis.” The companies listed there read like a guest list to an exclusive party: Apple, Google, Microsoft. Everyone nods. The analysis feels solid, defensible,

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Dividends vs. Buybacks- Which One Is Actually Putting Money in Your Pocket?

Dividends vs. Buybacks: Which One Is Actually Putting Money in Your Pocket?

Investing, Dividends, Fundamental Analysis

There’s a strange ritual in corporate finance where companies decide what to do with their profits. They can hand the cash directly to shareholders via dividends, or they can buy their own stock back from the market. One feels like getting paid. The other feels like a magic trick where your slice of the pie

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Why Diamond Hands is a Recipe for Mediocre Returns (Rebalancing)

Rebalancing: Why “Diamond Hands” is a Recipe for Mediocre Returns

Rebalancing, Investing

There’s a peculiar religion in modern investing where suffering is celebrated as virtue. Hold through the crash. Never sell. Diamond hands forever. The faithful wear their unrealized losses like badges of honor, proof of their commitment to the cause. Meanwhile, their portfolios drift further from any coherent strategy, weighted increasingly toward whatever happened to go

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Trust Me, Bro Finance- Why Social Media Makes Adverse Selection Worse

“Trust Me, Bro” Finance: Why Social Media Makes Adverse Selection Worse

Adverse Selection, Behavioral Finance

The stock market used to be a place where information asymmetry worked in predictable ways. Professional investors had Bloomberg terminals. Retail investors had newspapers and whatever their broker told them over the phone. Everyone understood the pecking order of who knew what when. Then social media arrived and promised to level the playing field. More

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