The Financial Times – The year in hedge funds: Dear loser Dear investor in Lex Advanced Long/Short Advisers, Time is an arbitrary concept. We draw your attention to this unappreciated point as we report performance year to date. Lala is active across the asset spectrum and we have seen what we at Lala call “complex”… Continue reading Hedge Funds’ Poor Year
<Click On chart for larger image> Bloomberg View – Japan’s Warning to the World Japan’s renewed descent into recession — its sixth in the past two decades — comes with an urgent if obvious warning to the U.S., Europe and the rest of the developed world: Don’t let this happen to you. Japan’s famously stagnant… Continue reading Japan’s Economy Continues To Weaken
The Wall Street Journal – Deal Boom Feeds on Surging Stocks Year’s Merger Tally Tops $3 Trillion, With Lofty Shares Helping Fund Purchases The deal market is on a tear. Global takeover activity has increased 32% over last year’s total at this point, according to Dealogic. The M&A market took a long time to come… Continue reading Big Year For Large Mergers
<Click on chart for larger image> The New York Times – Sliding Oil and Gas Prices Give Americans More Money to Spend American consumers are going to enjoy a more bountiful Christmas this year, thanks in part to a most unlikely source: Saudi Arabia. The steepening drop in gasoline prices in recent weeks — spurred… Continue reading Is $39 A Month A Game Changer For The U.S. Consumer?
<Click on char for larger image> Bloomberg.com – Fed Dual Mandates Clash as Jobless Drop Vies With Inflation Just when Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and her colleagues will be approaching a decision to raise interest rates, their two mandates will probably be pulling them in different directions. By June 2015, the jobless rate will… Continue reading The Fed’s Inflation Outlook
The Financial Times – Tracy Alloway and Michael MacKenzie: Bonds: anatomy of a market meltdown The two main electronic trading venues for US Treasuries are run by Nasdaq’s eSpeed and Icap’s BrokerTec. In recent years these platforms have opened up to a range of broker-dealers and high-frequency traders. These firms do not underwrite US Treasury… Continue reading Flash Crashes In The Bond Market
The Wall Street Journal – Elizabeth Warren And Joe Manchin: The Fed Needs Governors Who Aren’t Wall Street Insiders With two vacancies to fill, Obama should pick nominees who will look out for Main Street, not the big banks. The president should use that opportunity to address the Fed’s supervisory problem. The five sitting governors… Continue reading Two Vacancies At The Fed
Bloomberg.com – Greenspan Conundrum Risk Rising for Fed as BOJ, ECB Add Stimulus The risk bond yields will fail to climb as the Federal Reserve increases its cash benchmark is rising, echoing the dilemma faced a decade ago by then Chairman Alan Greenspan, according to money manager QIC Ltd. While the Fed is poised to… Continue reading Low Bond Yields Pose A “Greenspan-Like” Problem For The Fed
The Wall Street Journal – Small Towns Go to Bat for Wall Street Banks A Federal Reserve plan that could stop big banks from owning oil pipelines, metals warehouses and other physical-commodity assets is sounding alarm bells hundreds of miles from Wall Street. Small-town officials from Alabama, Louisiana, North Carolina and other states are warning… Continue reading Local Banks Help Out Wall Street
Bloomberg.com – The Burden of a Stronger Dollar It’s clear that the dollar was heading higher long before the Fed said it would end quantitative easing. It’s unknowable how much stronger U.S. sales overseas might have been had the currency’s strength not hobbled exporters. But with imports outpacing exports by an average $42 billion a… Continue reading The Dollar
CNBC – Icahn: ‘Major correction’ in the next few years Carl Icahn isn’t forecasting a dramatic stock market drop quite yet, but the billionaire investor is still bracing for an equity sell-off in the next three to five years, he told Reuters on Monday. “I am still concerned that one day you’ll see a break… Continue reading Billionaires Brace For A Sell-Off In Equities