Bloomberg Business – Energy ETF Flows Swell With Risk Embraced in Sideways S&P 500 SPDR Energy ETF has absorbed almost $1 billion in August The August rally in crude oil has investors piling into energy companies at the fastest pace in 16 months as they hunt for winning bets in a stock market that’s been drifting… Continue reading An Updated Look At Energy ETFs
<Click on graphic for larger image> Bloomberg View – Mark Gilbert: Fed Harmony Hides the Dangers of Groupthink Traders and investors trying to parse the statements coming from the world’s most important central bank are at a loss: Will an interest-rate increase come in September? And will there be one, two or no hikes this year?… Continue reading Groupthink At The Fed
<Click on graphic for larger image> Bloomberg Business – Strategist: I Can’t Remember the Last Time the Election Meant This Much for Markets Everyone’s pricing in political gridlock. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. That’s what financial markets are predicting for the world’s largest economy ahead of the November election, according to Bank of… Continue reading Why This Election Really Matters To Markets
The Financial Times – Goldman Sachs pushes algo for US corporate bonds Algorithm underlines push for automated trading in $8.4tn US fixed-income market Goldman Sachs is ramping up a computer programme that allows investors to trade in the $8.4tn US corporate bond market without ever having to communicate with someone from the investment bank, as… Continue reading Goldman Revamps Its Corporate Bond Trading Algorithm
<Click on chart for larger image> Forbes – Why the Stock Market Could Be Headed for a 1987-like Crash Don’t tell stock market investors, but we’re in the middle of the longest earnings recession since 2008. That’s according to data from FactSet, which shows that the second quarter of 2016 was the fifth straight in which overall… Continue reading The Earnings Recession
MarketWatch.com – Here’s how the Fed (and others) will drive gold to $1,700 Expect Apple to grab plenty of attention this morning. Shares are down 2% in premarket, after EU officials told Ireland to send the iPhone maker a $14.5 billion demand for taxes it sidestepped under a deal with the Emerald Isles. And it seems… Continue reading Central Bank Policy And Gold
The Wall Street Journal – Markets Believe the ECB Will Relax Rules on Bond-Buying Ultralow yields on two-year German sovereign bonds could be partly due to investors expecting them to become eligible for central-bank purchases Here’s a possible explanation: Investors are overpricing these bonds not because they expect interest rates to drop further, but because they… Continue reading More On The ECB’s Bond Buying
<Click on chart for larger image> The Wall Street Journal – U.S. Home Prices Continued Strong Gains in June Home prices continued to make strong gains in June, as continued price run ups put a damper on demand. The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Indices, covering the entire nation, rose 5.1% in the 12 months ended in June,… Continue reading Home Prices Rise
<Click on graphic for larger image> The Wall Street Journal – U.K. Treasury’s Warning of Bank Outflows Falls Flat in Post-Brexit Data So far, there’s little sign of foreign investors dumping their sterling-denominated deposits The massive outflow from sterling bank deposits that some politicians and economists predicted if the U.K. voted to leave Europe hasn’t yet… Continue reading Assessing The Damage From Brexit
Bloomberg View – Narayana Kocherlakota: Four Ways to Reform the Fed 4) There should be a public conversation about changing the structure of the Fed to better reflect its functions and objectives. Should it become a unified public entity, and if so what would the policy-making Open Market Committee look like? The Federal Reserve System has become… Continue reading Reforming The Fed
The Financial Times – Emerging markets won’t escape Fed’s grip East Asia is an economic bright spot, but remains vulnerable to any interest rate rise in the US Investors are increasingly disillusioned with extreme monetary policies, the pace of economic growth and the performance of equities in developed markets. In virtually every country where central banks have… Continue reading Emerging Markets Remain Vulnerable To The Fed
Bloomberg Business – Libor Swell Seen as Respite From Bonds With Negative Yields The rate is based on a daily survey of about a dozen big banks that estimate their short-term borrowing costs. Traders were revealed to have manipulated submissions to boost their numbers, culminating in record fines for collusion by banks. The Intercontinental Exchange, a… Continue reading LIBOR