<Click on chart for larger image> The Wall Street Journal – Jon Hilsenrath and Michael S. Derby: Fed Officials Gain Confidence They Can Raise Rates This Year A rate increase could come as early as September if economic data hold firm Federal Reserve officials are looking more confidently toward an interest-rate increase before year-end, possibly as… Continue reading More Threats Of Rate Hikes
Bloomberg.com – Tyler Cowen: Bad Moods Are the Other Global Migration Problem The unsettling reality of today’s world is that a bad mood can move readily from one country to another, even when events on the ground call for moderation or optimism. Or in the language of financial economics, emotional and ideological contagion is becoming… Continue reading More On The Populist Backlash Around The World
<Click on chart for larger image> Alhambra Investment Partners – Valuation Fallacies Prominently displayed on the front page of Yahoo!Finance today was an article whose purpose was just so barely disguised. You can and should read the whole piece, but the gist is essentially that we shouldn’t worry about very high valuations to the current… Continue reading Stock Valuation & Inflation
Reuters – Dark cloud of offshore fuel storage rising over oil price Fuel inventories in the United States, Europe and Asia are brimming despite the height of peak summer driving. European traders are now moving to store diesel on tankers at sea as on shore storage tests its limits yet again. At least one vessel,… Continue reading Crude Oil Supply/Demand
<Click on chart for larger image> Blackrock – Our outlook for the second half We are living in a low-return world, with future market returns likely to be lower than in recent history. The hunt for yield is getting more challenging. More than 70% of the bonds in developed-market government bond indexes today have yields… Continue reading Negative Rates
MarketWatch – Financial statements are outliving their usefulness for investors — and here’s how to replace them It used to be that earnings moved stock markets, but now even the “calamity” of missing analysts’ consensus forecast of earnings causes an average 1.5% drop in the share price that day — a change that’s within the… Continue reading Time To Replace Financial Statements?
<Click on chart for larger image> Bloomberg.com – Investors Pull Most Money Out of SPDR Gold in Eight Months An improving economic outlook in the U.S. is sapping demand for exchange-traded funds backed by gold. Investors pulled $793 million last week out of SPDR Gold Shares, the most since November, according to data compiled by… Continue reading Gold
Reuters – Japan may be on route for a “soft” form of helicopter money Japanese policymakers, who won’t go as far as funding government spending through direct debt monetisation, might pursue a mix of aggressive fiscal and monetary expansion to battle deflation, say sources familiar with the matter. In the past week, Japanese markets have… Continue reading Helicopter Money
ABC.net (Australia) – Goodbye Lenin, Hello Bernanke In the space of a mere eight years, the former US Federal Reserve Bank Chair Ben Bernanke has managed to achieve what Lenin could barely conceive. He’s convinced the US, the UK, Japan and Europe to embark on a revolutionary journey to completely subvert free market instincts, writes… Continue reading Comrade Bernanke
The New York Post – John Crudele: Why Trump should gut the Federal Reserve if he becomes president Donald Trump’s first job if he becomes president should be to gut the Federal Reserve Board, where desperate members are saying some pretty crazy things. The problem is, Trump may agree with the craziness. The latest eye-popping… Continue reading What Trump Should Do With The Fed
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The Wall Street Journal – Corporate Profits Set to Shrink for Fourth Consecutive Quarter More than 90 of the biggest U.S. companies will report results this week, giving a clearer picture of what is expected to be the fourth straight quarter of declining profits. Based on analysts’ forecasts for companies in the S&P 500 index,… Continue reading An Earnings Update