AQA – SPX – Ends Streak Without 1% Move The S&P 500 ended its streak of days without a 1% move at 62. The below updated chart looks at previous streaks going back to 1950. <Click on graphic for larger image>
Reuters – James Saft: Who’s afraid of Janet Yellen? Markets aren’t afraid of Janet Yellen, but you might want to be. Yellen and her colleagues at the Federal Reserve Board took unusually frank aim at frothy valuations in social media and biotech shares, as well as at parts of the debt markets, in testimony before… Continue reading Yellen
<Click on chart for larger image> The Economist – The euro-zone economy: Losing the plot Weak growth and nasty surprises are still the hallmarks of the single-currency club AS IN a complex film script, at least two storylines have been in play for the euro zone this year. One is brightly lit, featuring the revival… Continue reading Is Eurozone Growth Falling Back?
Real Time Economics – White House Economists See Few Labor Force Dropouts Returning The number of workers who left because of the weak economy but may return has been shrinking, the report concludes. By many measures the economy has been improving, albeit slowly, and around 1 million workers who were sitting things out may have… Continue reading Is the Labor Force Participation Rate About To Bottom Out?
The Economist – Buttonwood: No easy answers The conundrum of asset allocation Some of the finest minds on Wall Street and in academia were behind Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM), a hedge fund that collapsed in 1998, after following a strategy that believed the market was underpricing illiquid assets and overpricing liquid ones, using squillions of… Continue reading Asset Allocation
The Financial Times – IBM beats earnings and revenue expectations IBM beat expectations on earnings and revenue in the second quarter, as the technology company tries to transform itself to keep up with a corporate IT sector shifting towards the cloud and mobile. The company known as Big Blue reported non-GAAP earnings per share of… Continue reading All About IBM
Bloomberg.com – Bubble Paranoia Setting in as S&P 500 Surge Stirs Angst Two years of uninterrupted gains in U.S. stocks are sowing anxiety among financial professionals, with three in five saying the market is on the verge of a bubble or already in one, the Bloomberg Global Poll found. Forty-seven percent of those surveyed said… Continue reading Bubble Talk
Yahoo Finance – Two signs a market crash is coming Henry Blodget, co-founder and CEO of Business Insider, has been warning of a market collapse all year and believes that when it happens, it will happen in frenzied fashion. He tells me, “If history is prologue… there’s going to be a mad rush for the… Continue reading Crash Talk
<Click on chart for larger image> Bloomberg.com – Fed Rate-Rise Outlook Makes 30-Year Bond Treasury Market Winner U.S. 30-year bonds returned six times what investors earned in the broader Treasury market over the past two weeks as forecasts for Federal Reserve interest-rate increases in 2015 hold back short-term notes. Thirty-year securities rose 2.4 percent in… Continue reading How The Federal Reserve Has Helped The 30-Year Treasury Bond
<Click on chart for larger image> The Wall Street Journal – China Plays a Big Role as U.S. Treasury Yields Fall Investors wrestling with the mysterious U.S. bond rally of 2014 got a clue about where to look: China. The Chinese government has increased its buying of U.S. Treasurys this year at the fastest pace… Continue reading Finding The Reason For the “Mysterious” Bond Rally (Hint, It’s Not The Chinese)
The Wall Street Journal – HILSENRATH’S TAKE: TWO CAMPS IN THE FED’S RATE DEBATE Put aside the hawks and doves labels for a moment. There are two camps forming in the Fed’s emerging debate about when to start raising short-term interest rates. One side sees the jobless rate falling, inflation picking up and froth developing… Continue reading The Divided Federal Reserve