<Click on chart for larger image> Market Watch – May on track to set record for U.S. M&A activity U.S. mergers & acquisitions activity is on track for a record month in May, with $241.6 billion of deals already announced, topping the previous record of $225.8 billion announced in May 2007, according to Dealogic data.… Continue reading Booming M&A
Bloomberg.com – Ford Shortens Summer Shutdown to Meet Demand for SUVs, Pickups Ford Motor Co. is shortening summer vacation for workers at 16 North American factories to meet growing demand for sport-utility vehicles and its new aluminum-bodied F-150 pickup. To churn out an extra 40,000 vehicles, Ford is cutting the second half of a planned… Continue reading About Car Sales
The Wall Street Journal – Burton G. Malkiel: Janet Yellen Is No Stock Market Sage If you sold your biotech stock based on the Fed chair’s assessment of the market in July, you’d be sorry now. An overleveraged economy is a legitimate concern of the Federal Reserve, and public statements about the dangers of debt… Continue reading Janet Yellen, Stock Picker
Bloomberg.com – Hedge Fund Giant Tells Hillary Clinton to Cut the ‘Crap’ Billionaire hedge fund founder Leon Cooperman takes issue with the former secretary of state’s portrayal of his profession. “I don’t need anybody crapping all over what I do for a living,” Leon Cooperman, the billionaire founder of the Omega Advisors hedge fund, told CNN on Monday, adding that… Continue reading Cooperman Lectures Hillary Clinton
The Wall Street Journal – OPEC’s Pricing Leverage Is Weakening OPEC expected to leave crude oil output unchanged, showing how cartel’s power to sway prices has ebbed This week’s meeting of the world’s oil cartel will show how much its power has diminished amid sweeping changes in the global energy market. Oil prices have plummeted… Continue reading Is OPEC’s Dominance Slipping?
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Bond Volatility … Get Used To It A transcript of the May 28, 2015 conference call. Handout (also shown below) Audio [audio:https://www.biancoresearch.com/bianco/SubscriberArea/052815.mp3|titles=Conference Call ] [hana-flv-player video=”https://www.biancoresearch.com/bianco/SubscriberArea/052815.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” /] If the webcast does not work above, please download here. <Click above to view webcast> [pageview class=”PDFViewer” url=”https://www.biancoresearch.com/bianco/wp-content/plugins/PDFViewer/plugin.php?id=254″]
The Wall Street Journal – Easy Access to Money Keeps U.S. Oil Pumping It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. As crude prices began to plunge last year, many energy experts predicted a repeat of 1986 when U.S. oil companies lost their funding and the industry collapsed into a yearslong bust. Without money, companies had… Continue reading Crude Oil ETFs
Forbes – Financial Advisors Increasingly Opt for ETFs While advisors are still using mutual funds at a healthy clip – 78% said they use or recommend mutual funds in non-wrap client accounts – ETFs have been making a meaningful dent in mutual fund assets, which is a trend that is expected to continue as investors… Continue reading Mutual Funds vs. ETFs
The Wall Street Journal – For Fed, Dollar’s Strength Complicates Rate-Hike Calculus Many Federal Reserve officials entered 2015 thinking they likely would start raising short-term interest rates by midyear. That idea got put on ice after a winter economic slowdown, partly attributed to the dollar’s rapid rise in previous months. While the dollar’s value is… Continue reading Timing The First Rate Hike In Light Of A Surging Dollar
The Federal Reserve – The FOMC meeting minutes: An assessment of counting words and the diversity of views It is important to note that the FOMC minutes have gotten considerably longer over time. In 2005, the first year that the minutes were released on their current, expedited schedule, the average length per meeting was just… Continue reading Deciphering Fedspeak
<Click on chart for larger image> Bloomberg.com – Greek Contagion Contained May Weaken Tsipras Bargaining Hand Alexis Tsipras’s claim that a financial collapse in Greece would drag down the rest of the euro region is looking increasingly like a hollow threat. While the yield gap widened between Spanish and German debt after a weekend that… Continue reading Greek Contagion