The Wall Street Journal – OPEC Agrees to Extend Crude Output Caps The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries on Thursday renewed an agreement to withhold some crude-oil supplies into March 2018, people familiar with the matter said, doubling down on its bet that it can raise prices despite soaring output from American shale producers.… Continue reading OPEC Agrees To Extend Cuts
The Federal Reserve – Minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee The staff provided a briefing that summarized a possible operational approach to reducing the System’s securities holdings in a gradual and predictable manner. Under the proposed approach, the Committee would announce a set of gradually increasing caps, or limits, on the dollar amounts of… Continue reading The FOMC Minutes Cover Balance Sheet Reduction
The Economist – Fox News’s once-unquestioned dominance of cable news looks increasingly tenuous The conservative channel has Donald Trump, not Bill O’Reilly, to blame for its fall in the ratings The head-in-the-sand approach of Fox’s conservative prime-time anchors may have lulled many of those who remained loyal to the channel to sleep. Mr Carlson has… Continue reading Business News Networks Shunning Political Risks
Bloomberg – Overly Conservative Fed Is Limiting Inflation, Fed’s Evans Says The American public’s inflation expectations have declined because “conservative” central bankers haven’t done enough to stimulate the economy, said Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Charles Evans. Without criticizing anyone by name, Evans said those policy makers are too reluctant to allow inflation to… Continue reading Charles Evans Comments On Declining Inflation Expectations
Bloomberg Gadfly – Stephen Gandel: Stocks Still Need the Trump Touch But those earnings may not be as good as they appear. The first problem is measurement. Recently, more and more companies have been reporting adjusted earnings, or those that don’t comply with generally accepted accounting principles. And those adjusted earnings might be making the first-quarter’s profit jump… Continue reading Reasons For Caution On Earnings
The Financial Times – Passive investing charts path into new territory Within the next 12 months, according to the research house Bernstein, passive products will account for half of all equity assets under management in the US. Most stocks in the US are owned directly by individuals or institutions, so passive products will account for only… Continue reading Active vs. Passive
The Financial Times – US energy junk bonds shine as equity investors suffer in 2017 This has been a year of agony and bliss for investors in US energy companies. The sector has ranked among the worst performing within the benchmark S&P 500, with an 11 per cent decline wiping more than $165bn in market… Continue reading Energy Stocks vs. Bonds
Bloomberg Business – The Debt Ceiling In May, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin urged members of Congress to increase the nation’s debt ceiling before they left for their August recess, since tax receipts were coming slower than expected. The U.S. hit its current debt limit in March. This date was determined in October 2015 when, as… Continue reading The Debt Ceiling
Bloomberg – Economists Need to Learn a Messier Kind of Math People aren’t rational calculating machines. So why do models of the economy — models that inform policy in some of the world’s largest and wealthiest countries — still assume that they are? It might be no more than a matter of taste. Economists love… Continue reading Accounting For Human Nature In Models
Survey of Professional Forecasters: The chart below shows 25 years of 10-year yield forecasts as conducted by the Philadelphia Federal Reserve. The thick blue line shows actual 10-year yields while the various colored lines show almost 100 quarterly forecasts. It is very easy to see the bearish bent these forecasters have. They almost always forecast higher… Continue reading Miscellaneous Charts
On May 19 we commented on how emerging market ETF investors were likely to look past the latest corruption flare up. This appears to have been the case as net flows over the past 5 days rose to $515 million. Prices have begun to recover as well with the Brazil country specific ETF… Continue reading Markets