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
Slate – Meet the Four Companies That Together Provided Most of 2012 Earnings Growth in the S&P 500 A striking chart from Morgan Stanley’s Adam Parker shows that 2012 earnings growth among S&P 500 companies was highly concentrated, with 88 percent of it coming from the top 10 firms. I was even more struck by… Continue reading The Concentration Of Earnings Growth
The Financial Times – It’s 2007 again, thanks to the US Fed Financial conditions are as loose today as they were in 2007, Ben Bernanke noted in a speech he gave in New York on November 20. The Federal Reserve chairman had good reason for that observation. High-yield bond and loan market issuance year to… Continue reading Debt Issuance
Barron’s – Michael Kahn: The Absence of Market Fear is Scary Despite concerns about a looming fiscal cliff and a weak economy, stocks aren’t collapsing. But should investors be so complacent? It seems that the prevailing mood in the stock market is that there will be a deal to avoid going over the so-called fiscal… Continue reading Tail Risk And The Market Bears
Bloomberg.com – Republicans Reject Obama Budget as He Sells It to Public Congressional Republicans dug in to fight President Barack Obama’s plan to skirt the fiscal cliff, rejecting his tax-and-spending proposal as the president heads out today to sell it to the American public. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner shuttled among congressional leaders yesterday with a… Continue reading Fiscal Cliff Update
<Click on chart for larger image> Bloomberg.com – Spain May Escape European Bailout, Gonzalez-Paramo Says Former European Central Bank Executive Board member Jose Manuel Gonzalez-Paramo said Spain may escape a bailout, as the country has already confounded expectations by continuing to raise its own financing this year. “It is by no means excluded that a… Continue reading Spain
Reuters – Special Report: Greeks rage against pension calamity In the heat of a June night, Eleni Spanopoulou found her audience at an Athens hotel turning ugly. Mutiny and violence hung in the air. For hours the leader of the Greek journalists’ social security fund had been chairing a meeting about disastrous losses on retirement… Continue reading Greece
The Wall Street Journal – Firms Flood Bond Market to Finance Payouts Low interest rates have lured companies to borrow record amounts in the bond market this year. But a year-end spurt of bond sales has been tied to a different incentive: minimizing taxes. From Carnival Corp. to Costco Wholesale Corp.companies are rushing into the… Continue reading Corporate Bond Issuance
The Economist – Property: The Big Long A new generation of investors is betting on America’s housing market THOSE feeling nostalgic for the boom before 2007 will have been heartened this week by headlines about Lehman Brothers selling a portfolio of American apartments for $6.5 billion. Lehman Brothers? No, the investment bank felled by the… Continue reading A Housing Rebound?
The Economist – Buttonwood: Desperately seeking investors If pension funds do not buy equities, who will? THERE is always sadness when a long-lasting marriage falls apart. The close relationship between pension funds and equities, formed in the late 1950s, is heading for the divorce courts. Figures from the Pension Protection Fund, an industry insurance scheme,… Continue reading Pension Funds And Equities
Bloomberg.com – Recession Left Baby Bust as U.S. Births Lowest Since 1920 The U.S. birth rate in 2011 was 63.2 per 1,000 women of childbearing age, according to preliminary numbers. That’s down by almost half from a peak of 122.7 in 1957 during the postwar baby boom. The U.S. birth rate fell to a record… Continue reading A Baby Bust