The New York Times – Why Warren Buffett Is Worth $72 Billion and You’re Not Consider these two truthful sentences: Academics who study corporate finance overwhelmingly believe that conglomerates — giant companies that operate in a wide range of industries, often built through acquisitions — are an awfully inefficient way to organize businesses. And one… Continue reading Why Warren Buffett Is Successful
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Are We Off To A Disappointing Start? A transcript of the February 26, 2015 conference call. Handout (also shown below) Audio [audio:https://www.biancoresearch.com/bianco/SubscriberArea/022615.mp3|titles=Conference Call ] [hana-flv-player video=”https://www.biancoresearch.com/bianco/SubscriberArea/022615.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” /] <Click above to view webcast> [pageview class=”PDFViewer” url=”https://www.biancoresearch.com/bianco/wp-content/plugins/PDFViewer/plugin.php?id=246″]
Factset – Earnings Insight for February 27, 2014 Q1 Earnings Guidance: Negative Guidance (84%) Above Average At this point in time, 96 companies in the index ha ve issued EPS guidance for Q1 2015. Of these 96 companies, 81 have issued negative EPS guidance and 15 have issued positive EPS guidance. Thus, the percentage of… Continue reading Weekly Earnings Update
<Click on graphic for larger image> Comment The chart above shows monthly S&P 500 buyback announcements. In February the dollar value of announced buybacks reached a new high of just under $100 billion. The chart below shows actual S&P 500 buybacks. It is current through the third quarter and shows a near-record high in buybacks.… Continue reading Why Are Stocks Overvalued?
<Click on chart for larger image> Bloomberg.com – Mohamed El-Erian: 10 Things to Know About Negative Bond Yields JPMorgan has estimated that as much as 1.5 trillion euros ($1.7 trillion) of euro-zone debt trades with negative yields in a growing number of countries, including Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Moreover, this isn’t… Continue reading Negative Bond Yields
The Wall Street Journal – Jon Hilsenrath: Fed Ushers in a New Era of Uncertainty on Rates Investors these days are obsessing over when the Federal Reserve will start raising short-term interest rates. Drawing less scrutiny is where rates will end up in the long run and how they’ll get there. But it’s time to… Continue reading The Divergence Between Market & Fed Opinion On Rates
Comment Many on Wall Street believe rising inventories are a product of increased production (second panel in red) and imports (third panel in green). Note that these trends are relatively stable and cannot alone produce the spike in inventories seen in the top panel. <Click on chart for larger image> The top panel of the… Continue reading Why Aren’t Lower Gas Prices Helping Much?
MoneyBeat (WSJ Blog) – Inflation Makes for Confusion, Uncertainty in Markets Inflation numbers move financial markets, but lately, trying to understand inflation has meant dealing with an upside-down world…Complicating things is that money managers are trying to figure out not just the numbers themselves, but what the Fed will do about them. The Fed offers… Continue reading Deflation Fears Affecting Global Monetary Policy
The Wall Street Journal – A Financial System Still Dangerously Vulnerable to a Panic Dodd-Frank restrictions on the Federal Reserve’s powers to act as lender-of-last-resort, coupled with restrictions on federal guarantees for bank deposits and money-market funds, pose a threat to U.S. and global financial stability…Some commentators believe that restrictions on the Fed’s lender-of-last-resort powers… Continue reading The Fed’s Role As Lender Of Last Resort
Real Time Economics (WSJ Blog) – Fed’s Williams Sees Full U.S. Employment by Year End The U.S. economy will be operating at “full employment” by the end of this year as the unemployment rate drops to 5%, said John Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, on Sunday. Mr. Williams was quite… Continue reading Closing In On Full Employment?
The Wall Street Journal – Institutions Pour Cash Into Bond ETFs Institutions are piling into exchange-traded bond funds at the fastest pace on record, driven by forces reshaping the increasingly illiquid corporate-debt market and their desire to stay nimble ahead of expected interest-rate moves. Bond ETFs took in $32 billion globally this year through Feb.… Continue reading ETF Flows