<Click on graphic for larger image> The Wall Street Journal – Japan’s Central Bank Splits Over Easing Program Some on the BOJ’s board think its extensive bond buying needs to be more flexible, adding uncertainty to a radical experiment in monetary stimulus The world’s leading experiment in monetary easing is floundering, and its engineers are divided… Continue reading More On The End Of QE
Comment Our colleagues at AQA created the following chart which compares the number of hawkish versus dovish Fed news stories. Interestingly, this measure is its most hawkish since 2006. Yet, as the second and third charts below show, the markets are pricing in less than a 20% chance of a hike at this month’s meeting.… Continue reading Fed Update
CNBC – Trump: Scaling back ‘years of disastrous regulation’ will unlock growth Donald Trump thinks American GDP can grow more than 4 percent under his policies. “My great economists don’t want me to say this, but I think we can do better than that,” he said of a 4 percent growth goal Thursday in a speech to… Continue reading Trump’s Vision
<Click on graphic for larger image> The Financial Times – Active managers exposed as most US equity funds lag behind market A fresh blow for stockpickers as semi-annual survey finds 90% fall short of benchmark Nine out of ten US equity funds failed to beat the market over the past year, according to a new… Continue reading Active Management’s Underperformance
The Financial Times – SEC money market fund reforms help push Libor rates higher Rule change adds another factor for the Fed to weigh when it considers its own rate policy Forget Janet Yellen. Mary Jo White just raised interest rates. While everyone has been watching the Federal Reserve chair for clues on whether there will… Continue reading An SEC-Induced Tightening?
The Financial Times – Commodities attract record $54bn of inflows Is the sun shining again on commodity investments? With inflows of $54bn during January and August, investment flows into the asset class are at an all-time high for the first eight months of any year, according to Barclays. In its latest report on investment flows into commodities,… Continue reading Commodity Funds
Bloomberg Business – Forced Selling from Risk Parity Funds Will Push Up U.S. Real Treasury Yields, Says BofA A sinking risk parity fund lifts all yields. Some $50 billion worth of bond sales from risk parity portfolios is just one of the reasons why Bank of America Merrill Lynch is flip-flopping on its favorite trade of 2016,… Continue reading Risk Parity Funds
Zero Hedge (blog) – GMO: The Market Is About 70% Overvalued Which brings us back to the Shiller P/E. Much of the run-up over the past few years has been primarily about multiple expansions. And the scary thing about multiple expansions is that they are reliably mean-reverting—if they run too far, the market always takes it… Continue reading Scary Talk
DealB%k (NYT Blog) – At BlackRock, a Wall Street Rock Star’s $5 Trillion Comeback Over the last 10 years, Mr. Fink has transformed BlackRock from a bond shop catering to pension funds and insurance companies into an asset-gathering machine that uses advanced technology to reimagine how investors buy, sell and assess the risks of a wide… Continue reading BlackRock
MarketWatch.com – Caroline Baum: Maybe a computer could replace the Fed’s Janet Yellen? Economist Milton Friedman was in favor of replacing the Federal Reserve with a computer. Maybe he was on to something. The Nobel prize winner wasn’t dismissing the role of the central bank in providing a stable macro-economic environment. To the contrary, as a monetarist… Continue reading Can A Computer Replace Yellen?
MarketWatch – Warren asks FBI to find out why there were no criminal prosecutions from crisis probe referrals Senator Elizabeth Warren wants law enforcement officials to tell her why none of the individuals referred to them by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission for potential law-breaking related to the crisis were ever prosecuted. On the eighth anniversary… Continue reading Warren Wants To Know Why No One Went To Jail
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