The Financial Times – Mohamed El-Erian: Bond market ignores more assertive Fed at its peril When it comes to investor positioning, an important takeaway from last month should have been that the Federal Reserve, now less worried about the economic outlook, is becoming more assertive in leading, rather than following markets. Some recent signals suggest… Continue reading Timing The Next Hike
Bloomberg.com – Carmakers Post Surprise Declines as Discounts Fail to Buoy Sales GM’s Chevy Malibu, Ford’s Fusion each drop more than 35% Carmakers ‘out of room’ to increase spending on incentives U.S. auto sales trailed estimates, with Kia Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. reporting some of the biggest declines, as heavy incentive spending failed… Continue reading Auto Sales Disappoint
The Wall Street Journal – This Volatility Warning Has a Different Ring to It Today Extreme volatility hasn’t played out like James Dimon predicted a year ago, but low volatility is creating a whole bunch of new concerns “Realized volatility is usually lower than the VIX and the gap between two today isn’t out of… Continue reading The Problem With Low Volatility
Philosophical Economics – Diversification, Adaptation, and Stock Market Valuation Looking back at asset class performance over the course of market history, we notice a hierarchy of excess returns. Small caps generated excess returns over broad equities, which generated excess returns over corporate bonds, which generated excess returns over treasury bonds, which generated excess returns… Continue reading Diversification
The Financial Times – Energy junk bond rally runs out of gas High yield energy bonds have, for the moment, run out of gas. US junk energy bonds suffered their first losing month in more than a year, returning minus 0.4 per cent in March as crude prices slid into correction. The decline is the… Continue reading Energy Bonds
Bloomberg.com – Michael Pettis: What’s Really Driving the Trade Deficit With China Unlike in the past, most deficits today have little to do with currency manipulation or unfair tariffs. In the 19th century, import tariffs were the main instrument of trade intervention, increasingly supplemented during the 1920s and 1930s by currency machinations. This continued well… Continue reading Trade With China
Bloomberg.com – Musk Trolls Shorts as Tesla’s Value Hits Record, Passes Ford ‘Stormy weather in Shortville…’ CEO tweets as stock surges Tesla valued at $48.2 billion ahead of Model 3 production Tesla Inc.’s saw its capitalization surge to about $48.2 billion, $3.1 billion more than Ford, the No. 2 automaker in the U.S. after General Motors… Continue reading Tesla Beats Ford
Reuters – Global debt hits $215 trillion in 2016, led by emerging markets: IIF Global debt rose to 325 percent of the world’s gross domestic product in 2016, totalling $215 trillion, an Institute for International Finance report released on Monday showed, boosted by the rapid growth of issuance in emerging markets. Global debt grew by $7.6… Continue reading How Much Debt Is In The World?
The Financial Times – Women still miss out on management in finance FT research reveals failure to close gender gap in middle and senior roles The majority of junior staff working in financial services are women but only one in four of those who reach a senior role is female, according to exclusive Financial Times… Continue reading Women In Finance
*Note* For your convenience, you are able to PDF the entire transcript below by the hitting the PDF icon on the top right of this post. The topics we covered in this conference call are below, separated by post. Comment James A. Bianco, President, Bianco Research: Good morning, everybody. This is Jim Bianco. … Continue reading The Markets, Fed Hikes, and the Trump Rally – Summary/Conclusion
Comment Fed tightening campaign – what you’re looking at here is the targeted Funds Rate back to 1971. For those of you who are geeks on this kind of stuff, this was a reverse-engineered series done by the Richmond Fed a number of years ago. All of the shaded areas on the chart are what… Continue reading Fed Tightening Campaign