Bloomberg – Wage Growth Is Coming. Those Profits Can’t Last Employers report that replacing a departed worker is expensive — a red flag that the workforce is widely underpaid. One of the big economic questions for 2018 is whether the strong economic expansion and the resolution of tax uncertainty kick the labor market and wage growth… Continue reading U.S. and German 2y10y Spreads Look Ready to Converge
The Financial Times – US stocks hit new record for stretch without a 5% reversal Robust global economy and supportive monetary policy help S&P 500 to beat milestone set in 1990s On Friday the S&P 500 gained another 0.4 percent to close at a fresh record high, and extending its streak of no 5 percent setbacks… Continue reading World Stocks Go Streaking
OPEN Commitment of Traders Analysis For January 19, 2018 On January 19, 2018, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) released the Commitments of Traders (CoT) statistics for Tuesday, January 16, 2018. Click on the open button above for some charts and a few short webcasts noting some the data we found interesting from our new interactive… Continue reading CoT Webcasts for January 19, 2018
The Wall Street Journal – Sell in January? Why Treasurys Fall in Winter Market lore says now is the time to sell U.S. government debt A Wall Street adage holds investors should sell stocks in May and go away to avoid a summer market slump. For bondholders, that month could be January. Investors and analysts often… Continue reading Treasuries Enter A Seasonally Horrible Period
Barron’s – Barron’s Roundtable: A Bevy of Bargains The number of publicly listed companies in the U.S. has fallen roughly by half in the past 20 years. You might think combing through a shorter stack of stocks would make it easier to identify future winners, but not a chance. Successful investing still requires rigorous research and… Continue reading Barron’s Roundtable Offers Its Stock Picks
Barron’s – Did BlackRock’s Larry Fink Go Too Far? The tremor Wall Street felt last Tuesday was caused by a letter—the annual epistle from BlackRock CEO Larry Fink to CEOs of companies in which the world’s biggest institutional investor owns shares. To paraphrase an old EF Hutton TV ad, when BlackRock talks, people listen. Behind Fink… Continue reading Passive Money Managers Exert Their Influence
Real Time Economics (WSJ Blog) – Can We Be Brutally Honest About Investment Returns? With U.S. stocks at all-time highs, it’s more important than ever that investors be brutally realistic about future returns. Some of the most purportedly sophisticated investors in the world, the managers of giant pension funds for state and local government employees,… Continue reading Pension Funds’ Unrealistic Assumptions
The Financial Times – Loan covenant quality hits weakest level on record: Moody’s Investor protections in the $960bn US leveraged loan market deteriorated to the weakest level on record in the third quarter of 2017, according to analysts with rating agency Moody’s on Thursday. Covenants — safeguards for investors lending to a company — have loosened… Continue reading High Yield
Bloomberg.com – Bond Traders Aren’t Immune to Automation, Goldman’s CFO Says Bond traders, you’ve been warned: Marty Chavez and his robots are coming for you. That message came across during a conference call for Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s fourth-quarter and year-end results. Chavez, the bank’s chief financial officer and a former Silicon Valley startup founder, said that… Continue reading Robots Are Taking Our Jobs: Bond Trader Edition
LinkedIn – Geoffrey Garrett: Is This the End of Money? I spent the first week of the New Year with a great group of Wharton undergraduates visiting many of our tremendous alumni in the San Francisco Bay Area. To say it felt very different from the East Coast is an understatement. And I am not talking… Continue reading The Concept Of Cryptocurrencies As Decentralized Money
The Financial Times – John Williams has Fed vice-chair job in his sights John Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, is gunning for one of the top positions in central banking, saying it would be a “great honour” to serve as number two under Jay Powell, the incoming chair. The regional Fed… Continue reading John Williams For Fed Vice Chair?
The Financial Times – Number of stock indices at 3m dwarfs tally of quoted companies There are now more than 70 times as many stock market indices as there are quoted stocks in the world, according to a groundbreaking survey by the Index Industry Association. A census of its members found that they publish and… Continue reading Indices Outnumber Stocks 70:1