Edward J. Strafaci ~ Academic Blog

What do you think about the future of retail? U.S. online retail sales likely to surpass $1 trillion by 2027: FTI http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-retail-internet/u-s-online-retail-sales-likely-to-surpass-1-trillion-by-2027-fti-idUSKBN1CM1LW CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. online retail sales will surpass $1 trillion by 2027 compared with $445 billion this year, according to a forecast by business advisory firm FTI Consulting Inc (FCN.N), as more Americans move away from brick-and-mortar stores. Online sales will grow at a compound annual rate of 12 percent through 2020 and at a relatively moderate 9 percent over the next decade, according to the report released on Tuesday. Purchases made online accounted for 12 percent of total U.S. retail sales and 50 percent of total sales growth in the past year, according to the study. FTI said Amazon.com Inc’s (AMZN.O) total share of these online sales is likely to increase to 53 percent by 2027 from 34 percent in 2016. This means ...

Summary Annualized Returns are significantly adversely effected by the extension of closing dates for mergers and acquisitions (extension risk). Acquirers tend to overstate expected completion times so as to reduce the likelihood (and embarrassment) of issuing extension updates. This brief overview reviews the completion times (both expected and observed) of cash financed, U.S. targets since the start of 2016. This article is intended to form part of a series of articles gradually taking the reader deeper into the mathematics of merger arbitrage deal analysis. Introduction How to calculate the return on M&A deals and pair that return with its associated risk has long been known. In this case, the “risk” is the downside potential should the deal fall through. This article assumes the reader is familiar with the basics of this alternative event driven strategy as identifying and calculating downside risk will not be covered. For additional information the read...

Who will replace Janet Yellin as Fed Chair? By   ANTHONY MIRHAYDARI   MONEYWATCH   October 9, 2017, 5:15 AM Retrieved from: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/who-will-replace-janet-yellen-as-federal-reserve-chair/ After hammering Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen mercilessly on the 2016 presidential campaign trail, Donald Trump will soon get to nominate her replacement. Then-candidate Trump was vicious, saying Yellen should be " ashamed of herself "  for doing " political things " by holding interest rates so low for so long and propping up a "false stock market" in the process. Since then, he has modulated his message. President Trump now claims to be a " low interest rate person " and said he respected Yellen while frequently touting the stock market's post-election surge on Twitter. With Yellen's term ending in just four months, Wall Street is gripped by the questions of who will replace her, what the new chair's po...