<Click on chart for larger image> The Wall Street Journal – Should You Fear the ETF? After 23 years and $2 trillion invested, regulators and advisers are raising the rhetoric on this fast-growing financial product, a cousin to traditional mutual funds (which still dominate with nearly $13 trillion in assets). The SEC is chewing on… Continue reading The Rise Of ETFs
Comment Yesterday we hosted a conference call titled “What The Fed Decision Means.” The mp3 and handout are below. Audio [audio:https://www.biancoresearch.com/bianco/SubscriberArea/120315.mp3|titles=Conference Call ] [pageview class=”PDFViewer” url=”https://www.biancoresearch.com/bianco/wp-content/plugins/PDFViewer/plugin.php?id=276″] Webcast [hana-flv-player video=”https://www.biancoresearch.com/bianco/SubscriberArea/120315.flv” width=”600″ height=”495″ description=”” player=”3″ autoload=”false” autoplay=”false” loop=”false” autorewind=”true” splashimage=”https://www.biancoresearch.com/bianco/wp-content/themes/twentyten/images/splash.jpg” /]
The Wall Street Journal – Hilsenrath Analysis: Jobs Report Clears the Way for Fed Rate Increase Jobs numbers came in as expected by Wall Street analysts Friday’s employment report clears the way for the Federal Reserve to raise short-term interest rates by a quarter-percentage point at its Dec. 15-16 policy meeting, ending seven years of… Continue reading Employment In Pictures
The Financial Times – ECB pledges to extend easing until March 2017 ‘or beyond’ Mario Draghi’s latest bid to revive the eurozone economy by extending unprecedented monetary easing prompted a sharp sell-off on Thursday in markets that had bet on even more. The European Central Bank pledged to continue its €60bn-a-month bond buying programme for… Continue reading Mario Disappoints
<Click on chart for larger image> The Financial Times – A record setting year in M&A: a chart Central bank tightening in the US and the possibility that the European Central Bank may be close to finishing could derail the M&A boom next year but, there’s a fresh reminder that 2015 has been a bumper… Continue reading Record M&A
<Click on chart for larger image> The New York Times – Why Negative Interest Rates Are Becoming the New Normal Central bankers have long talked about the problem of the “zero lower bound.” That’s the idea that interest rates can’t be set below zero. It is an important concept because it would mean there is… Continue reading Negative Yields
The Financial Times – Gillian Tett: A puzzle Janet Yellen cannot solve with a rate rise The productivity paradox reminds us how little we understand about the US economy This week the US Federal Reserve received a small gift. On Wednesday statisticians released data showing that productivity in the American economy rose 2.2 per cent… Continue reading No One Understands Productivity
The Financial Times – Corporate debt downgrades reach $1tn More than $1tn in US corporate debt has been downgraded this year as defaults climb to post-crisis highs, underlining investor fears that the credit cycle has entered its final innings. The figures, which will be lifted by downgrades on Wednesday evening that stripped four of the… Continue reading Debt Downgrades
<Click on graphics for larger images> The Economist – Emerging-market banks: Stressful times The problems of banks in the developing world are more chronic than acute IN FINANCE, things that grow very fast have an irksome tendency to blow up. American subprime mortgages prior to 2008, southern European sovereign debt in the run-up to 2010… Continue reading Emerging Market Banks
The Financial Times – What investor assumptions are common and flawed? US payrolls and Opec meeting have power to upend current market trends Depending on who you asked, disappointment in the size of European monetary stimulus measures announced on Thursday was mild, massive, or [unprintable]. Hints dropped by senior members of the European Central Bank… Continue reading Investor Assumptions
Brookings – Ben S. Bernanke: Fed emergency lending Earlier this week, the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors approved a rule implementing restrictions on its emergency lending powers that were mandated by Congress in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act. On the whole, the rule is a sensible compromise which clarifies the procedures for Fed lending in a… Continue reading Bernanke Worries About Emergency Lending