<Click on graphic for larger image> Bloomberg.com – BOJ Negative Rates Risk Destroying Loan Market as Freeze Deepens The freeze in Tokyo’s market for overnight loans looks set to extend into a third month as the Bank of Japan’s negative rate policy makes it harder for brokers to price and process transactions. Two months after… Continue reading The Financial System Is Not Set Up To Handle Negative Rates
The New York Times Magazine – The Fall of China’s Hedge-Fund King Xu Xiang was a legend in the country’s booming stock market — until the bubble he helped to create took him down with it. At 10:33 a.m. on Sunday, Nov. 1 of last year, the highway police in Ningbo, an industrial city on… Continue reading The Story Of A Chinese Hedge Fund Legend
<Click on cartoon for larger image>
The Wall Street Journal – U.S. March Nonfarm Payrolls Rose by 215,000; Jobless Rate 5.0% The U.S. continued to add jobs at a healthy pace in March, a sign of the domestic labor market’s resilience despite economic turmoil overseas. Nonfarm payrolls rose by a seasonally adjusted 215,000 in March, the Labor Department said Friday. The… Continue reading Employment In Pictures
<Click on graphic for larger image> Bloomberg.com – Even Bulls Get Stampeded by Gold’s Best Quarter in Three Decades `Absolutely no one saw this coming,’ Sharps Pixley’s CEO says Biggest inflows since 2009 join record volume in Comex futures Gold’s been on such a tear, even the bulls got left behind. “Absolutely no one saw… Continue reading Gold’s Great Quarter
<Click on graphic for larger image> Factset – Negative EPS Guidance Approaches 10 Year Record For Q1 2016, 94 companies in the S&P 500 have issued negative EPS guidance and 27 companies in the index have issued positive EPS guidance. If 94 is the final number of companies issuing negative EPS guidance for the quarter,… Continue reading Earnings Guidance
Dana Lyons – Stocks Entering Weakest Quarter Of The Presidential Cycle For centuries, observers have attempted to identify patterns, or cycles, occurring in market prices. In the U.S. stock market, perhaps the most widely cited cycle is the 4-year Presidential cycle. As the name implies, the cycle has to do with the market’s behavior vis-a-vis… Continue reading Stocks Entering Poor Seasonal Period By One Measure
MoneyBeat (WSJ Blog) – Big Bond Investors Say Liquidity Has Declined in Past Year Bond market liquidity isn’t getting any better. Three-quarters of institutional bond investors say that liquidity provided by bond dealers has declined in the past year, according to research by Greenwich Associates released Thursday. The survey of 51 money managers shows that… Continue reading Bond Liquidity
The Financial Times – Gillian Tett: The inflation enigma needs unorthodox answers So what explains falling inflation expectations? One answer might be that investors and citizens are indeed more pessimistic about the economic outlook than the Fed, and have lost faith in the central bank’s ability to push prices higher using extraordinary monetary policy tools.… Continue reading Understanding Inflation Expectations
The Financial Times – S&P 500’s record dividend run ends in first quarter A run of record dividend payments for S&P 500 companies ended in the first quarter as energy groups slashed payouts and other businesses increased their payments at a lower pace. For the first three months of 2016, dividends to shareholders at US… Continue reading Dividend Growth Begins To Slow
The Economist – Bucking the trend Recent market reaction to the policy moves of other central banks has been rather counter-intuitive. Normally, you would expect monetary easing by a central bank to lead to a weaker currency. But recent policy shifts by the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan have sent the euro… Continue reading Fed Policy & The Dollar
<Click on cartoon for larger image>