The Wall Street Journal – James Mackintosh: The Real Fear Is When We All Fear Alike The danger isn’t so much that investors are wrong, but that they are too uniformly confident in their view It isn’t what you worry about that hurts your portfolio. It is what you know for sure. Two things most… Continue reading How Markets Trade When A Consensus Develops
<Click on graphic for larger image> <Click on graphic for larger image> Bloomberg Business – Bull Market Losing Big Ally as Buybacks Fall Most Since 2009 Coming amid the worst profit slump since the financial crisis, the slowdown may signal companies are preserving cash as economic and political uncertainty whips up from Europe to China… Continue reading Are Buyback Set To Disappear?
The Financial Times – Mark Spitznagel beats drum for tail risks as markets stall Libertarian US fund manager insists that protecting against extreme risks is worth the cost “This is the greatest monetary experiment in history. Why wouldn’t it lead to the biggest collapse? My strategy doesn’t require that I’m right about the likelihood of… Continue reading Do Markets Have A Purpose Anymore?
None Today
The Wall Street Journal – Daniel Yergin: Where Oil Prices Go From Here With political change in Saudi Arabia and the market rebalancing, look for $50 a barrel by the fall. The new Saudi strategy is to use oil revenues to diversify the economy and build the world’s largest sovereign-wealth fund as the investment engine… Continue reading Oil Supply/Demand
Barron’s – Randall W. Forsyth: Trump Clinton: Reality Bites the Markets Last week’s developments point to the kinds of unsettling events that investors will have to deal with in the six months leading up to the presidential election. Mixed signals on retail sales. The relevance to stock market investors so far is circumstantial. Yet the… Continue reading An Election Update
Bloomberg.com – Will the U.K. Heed Carney’s Warning of Brexit? Scott Thiel, deputy chief investment officer of Fixed Income at BlackRock, discusses comments made by the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, the impact of possible Brexit on markets and if the U.K. will actually exit the EU. He speaks with Caroline Hyde… Continue reading Is A BRexit Scare Coming?
MarketWatch – Here’s how investors are duped each earnings season A year ago, we explained the many ways companies make reading their quarterly earnings reports a miserable task. We weren’t just whining. We wanted to remind companies that our readers regularly tell us they struggle to understand earnings announcements, and our job is to decode… Continue reading An Earnings Update
<Click on chart for larger image> Atlanta Federal Reserve – GDP Now The GDPNow model forecast for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the second quarter of 2016 is 2.8 percent on May 13, up from 2.2 percent on May 10. After this morning’s retail sales report from the U.S. Census Bureau, the… Continue reading A GDP Update
<Click on chart for larger image> The Financial Times – John Plender: Underperforming fund managers seem to dodge Darwinian capitalism For decades, the fund management business has been largely immune from the pressures that afflicted mainstream financial services. Consider. Since the 1970s, banking has been locked into an escalating cycle of deregulation, increased competition, financial… Continue reading Your Daily Installment In Kicking Hedge Funds In The Teeth
<Click on graphic for larger image> The Wall Street Journal – China Challenged to Keep Yuan Stable as Dollar Rises PBOC must support growth while keeping currency valuable enough to stem flood of wealth abroad Having had it easy for a few months, the Chinese central bank is now coming under renewed pressure to steady… Continue reading Supporting The Yuan
<Click on chart for larger image> The Financial Times – Negative interest rates ‘poison’ German pension funds The German regulator has piled further pressure on the European Central Bank over its low interest rate policy, which experts believe is wreaking havoc on pension schemes and savers in Europe’s largest economy. BaFin, Germany’s financial services watchdog,… Continue reading Negative Rates