Bloomberg.com – Nobel Prize to Get Hedge Fund Boost After Awards Sink 20% The Nobel Foundation, which this year lopped 20 percent off its cash prizes, is planning to invest more money through hedge funds to boost its returns and restore the award to its previous size. … this year cut the cash amount of… Continue reading Will This End Well?
The New York Times – High-Speed Trades Hurt Investors, a Study Says The chief economist at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Andrei Kirilenko, reports in a coming study that high-frequency traders make an average profit of as much as $5.05 each time they go up against small traders buying and selling one of the most… Continue reading HFT
Comment Jim Bianco was on CNBC on Friday discussing the fiscal cliff. To view the interview click on the image above. To view any of our recent interviews click here. The Financial Times – Geithner takes hard line on fiscal cliff Tim Geithner challenged Republicans in Congress to come up with their own budget proposal… Continue reading The Fiscal Cliff
CNBC – Despite Risks, Investors Just Can’t Quit US Treasurys Despite an array of reasons to avoid government debt, investors are continuing to pile into Treasurys-fiscal cliff or no fiscal cliff. Reversing a six-month trend, U.S. securities topped corporate bonds in November, even amid all the wrangling over the deficit-reduction talks and the divisive presidential… Continue reading Bond Mutual Funds, What Is The Public Buying?
Mauldin Economics – Popular Delusions: The bull case for safe havens By Dylan Grice, Societe Generale Generally, and especially over the last decade, government bonds have been the safe haven. ‘Risk‐on riskoff’ might be the catchy nomenclature du jour, but the fact is that government bonds have generally benefitted from their safe haven status throughout… Continue reading Stock/Bond Correlations
Real Time Economics (WSJ Blog) – Number of the Week: Disposable Income Isn’t Coming Back Soon 1.2%: The increase in disposable personal income per capita since the recovery began, adjusted for inflation. Disposable income growth hasn’t kept up with broader economic expansion during the recovery, and it’s likely to remain under pressure for the foreseeable… Continue reading Personal Income
Yahoo Finance – Michael Santoli: Bernanke’s Easy-Money Moves: The Crucial Reality This formulation, casting Bernanke as a Robin Hood in reverse, misses the crucial reality of what the Fed has been trying to do and the ways in which these efforts have been effective. Sure, rock-bottom rates and a banking system overstuffed with free money… Continue reading A Look Back At Monetary Policy
<Click on chart for larger image> Barron’s – Gene Epstein: The News So Far: A Smaller, Older Labor Force The recent decline in overall participation could be due almost entirely to the cyclical tendency for participation to falter owing to high unemployment. As the unemployment rate continues to fall, the participation rate could turn back… Continue reading The Shrinking Labor Force
Bloomberg.com – Summers Opposed as Fed Chairman by Almost 50% in Survey Almost half of global investors say President Barack Obama shouldn’t select former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers as the next chairman of Federal Reserve Board, according to the latest Bloomberg Global Poll of investors. Only 17 percent of the 862 surveyed say it would… Continue reading Who Should Take Over For Bernanke?
<Click on chart for larger image> MarketBeat (WSJ Blog) – December Rally No Sure Thing December hasn’t faced a fiscal cliff quite like this. The final month of the year is typically a jolly time for stock investors. Since 1950, the S&P 500 has averaged a 1.7% gain in December, good for the best performing… Continue reading ‘Tis The Season
The Wall Street Journal – Rain May Spoil Spain’s Parade Spanish government bonds closed two weeks of strong trading Friday, leaving Spain and the euro zone in a happy holding pattern that has reduced the immediate need for a bailout of the bloc’s fourth-largest economy. Once-reluctant investors have made cautious bets on Spain, bolstered by… Continue reading Europe