The Financial Times – Oil reaches $68 as Saudi raises selling prices Oil scaled fresh heights for the year on Tuesday, topping $68 a barrel, with Saudi Arabia raising official selling prices in response to stronger demand. North Sea Brent, the international benchmark, has now rebounded by 50 per cent since falling to a five-year… Continue reading Crude Oil’s Catch-22
<Click on chart for larger image> MarketWatch.com – Oil in the $30s? It may happen as a ‘short squeeze’ ends It’s springtime, and the birds are singing, the trees and flowers are blooming, and oil prices are soaring. On Tuesday, ICE Brent crude hit its 2015 high near $68 a barrel. It’s been a remarkable… Continue reading Why $30 Oil Is Still Possible
The Financial Times – Exchange traded funds global assets reach $3tn Enthusiasm for exchange traded funds has propelled the global market beyond $3tn in assets, highlighting how investors increasingly prefer tracking broad trends. The rise of exchange traded funds and other so-called passive investing strategies has gathered pace in recent years thanks in part to… Continue reading More On Index Investing
<Click on chart for larger image> The Wall Street Journal – Market U-Turn Rams Hedge Funds Many funds that bet on global financial and economic trends run by firms such as Fortress Investment Group LLC and Discovery Capital Management LLC suffered losses in April as they tried to benefit from a constellation of market moves… Continue reading More On Hedge Fund Performance
The Financial Times – Investors must prepare for lower returns Low valuations allow room for error but shares are no longer cheap The wild card for the Fed is labour market recovery and wage inflation. For the moment, we believe that gives the Fed room to move gradually in raising policy rates. It is going… Continue reading Range-Bound Equity Markets
<Click on chart for larger image> The Wall Street Journal – HILSENRATH’S TAKE: TWO VIEWS INSIDE FED ON US PRODUCTIVITY SLOWDOWN The U.S. Labor Department will report another batch of dismal productivity numbers Wednesday. It’s already in the numbers – near zero growth in economic output and expanding payrolls in the first quarter meant more… Continue reading Productivity And The Federal Reserve
Bloomberg Business – Global Bond Rout Halts as Rising Debt Yields Attract Investors A rally in Italian and Spanish government bonds led a rebound in debt markets around the world after a selloff that wiped out more than $410 billion in value in the past week. Treasuries erased intraday losses along with government bonds across… Continue reading Volatility In The Global Bond Market
The Washington Post – The recovery is stalling out again. Is the economy actually in … a recession? The U.S. economy barely grew at the start of the year, and it’s barely growing any more than that now. It’s bad enough that it’s not completely crazy to wonder whether we’ve somehow slipped back into a… Continue reading The Disappointing Economy
Bloomberg Business – What 118 Fed Rate Increases Since 1948 Show as Economy Falters Since 1948, the Fed has increased its benchmark on 118 occasions against a quarterly backdrop in which the average growth in nominal GDP was an average 8.6 percent, Deutsche Bank’s strategists wrote in a report published Wednesday. Only in the third… Continue reading Inappropriate Rate Increases
<Click on chart for larger image> Dr Ed’s Blog – Analysts Continue to Lower S&P 500 Earnings (excerpt) Although the dollar might have peaked on March 13 for a while, and the price of crude oil might have bottomed on January 13 for a while, industry analysts who cover the S&P 500 are still lowering… Continue reading Earnings Expectations Continue To Be Lowered
MarketWatch.com – Opinion: Here’s how a stock market sounds when the bubble bursts ..Cook describes three scenarios of what happens when the market is in a bubble: 1. Head-fakes and lost faith In this scenario, the bubble makes an all-time high but reverses. “The market will slowly make a higher-high, but just by a little… Continue reading Bubble Talk
The Wall Street Journal – ‘Flash Crash’ Overhaul Is Snarled in Red Tape A giant data project at the center of the regulatory response to the 2010 “flash crash” that sent the Dow plummeting nearly 1,000 points is years behind schedule and mired in red tape. It took investigators months to come to a basic… Continue reading More On The Flash Crash