Wall Street Journal – Gold Is Flashing Inflation, Not North Korea A rising currency and rising prices at home in the world’s largest manufacturer is a double whammy for buyers of Chinese goods One possible factor in gold’s surge is its role as a haven in times of geopolitical trouble. That seems overblown, though: Tensions… Continue reading Gold Weakening but Outlook Still Positive
Bloomberg – There’s More to Global Rally Than Fading Irma or Korea Fears The risk rally’s back on and most of the credit’s going to easing of concern around Hurricane Irma and North Korea. There’s likely more to it than that. Consider the latest price data from China. They indicated a surge in inflation that suggests… Continue reading Risk-on, but U.S. a Laggard for Justifiable Reasons
The Financial Times – US and Europe have world’s worst-funded corporate pension schemes Deterioration in recent years prompts new fears of retirement ‘time bomb’ DuPont of the US, the UK’s BT and Canada’s Hydro One have the worst-funded pension schemes in the world, according to new research that underlines the negative impact low interest rates and… Continue reading Flattening Yield Curve Hitting Companies with Large Pension Liabilities
Bloomberg.com – To Gauge If Global Growth Is Running Out of Gas, Watch Sweden Swedish PMI plunge may be early sign of slowdown: Nordea Nation’s indicators tend to lead moves in larger countries While a jump in China prices shines a positive light on the strength of the global economy, some 4,000 miles away there are signs of… Continue reading The Importance Of Sweden
Forbes – Earnings Recovery Remains An Illusion While analysts hail “the best earnings season in 13 years,” the market has delivered a solidly lackluster response. Over the past month, the S&P 500 is down roughly 1% despite a string of earnings beats. With valuations this stretched, the market no longer appears willing to reward… Continue reading Operating vs. GAAP Earnings
Business Insider – The creator of Wall Street’s ‘fear gauge’ says people don’t understand it as well as they should Rapier: How should people interpret current VIX levels? Whaley: When you see VIX go up, you can know there are a bunch of people out there that are buying insurance on the stock market because they’re anxious about… Continue reading Does Anyone Understand The VIX?
Bloomberg Business – Bitcoin Diehards Are Undeterred by China Cyptocurrency recovers even as nation said to ban exchanges Bitcoin devotees aren’t losing their enthusiasm even as China tightens its control of the use of cryptocurrencies. “As long as there are exchanges somewhere in the world, bitcoin is useful all over the world,” Roger Ver, one of the… Continue reading More On Bitcoin
Bloomberg Gadfly – Private Assets Are the New Hedge Funds Hedge funds are dead. Long live private assets. Remember when hedge funds were the envy of investors? The returns were magical. The managers were gods. And they bestowed their bounty on a select smart-money set. Investors happily paid absurd fees for the privilege, typically a… Continue reading Private Assets, The New Hedge Fund
Bloomberg.com – Voice Brokers Beware: New MiFID Rules May Cost You Your Job Executing trades by telephone to become rarer in Europe Shift to electronic platforms may exacerbate volatility Sweeping regulations designed to make markets more transparent threaten to erode the last bastions of European voice trading, from bonds to commodities. Under MiFID II rules, which… Continue reading The End Of Brokers On Phones?
The Financial Times – Chart of the day, offshore tax haven market-share edition The first shows the market share lost by Switzerland in recent years to Asian tax havens, especially Hong Kong, whose assets under management “have been multiplied by a factor of 6” between 2007 and 2015: The second shows the startling, if unsurprising, fact… Continue reading The End Of Switzerland?
Bloomberg.com – Tracy Alloway: How the Emerging Market Bond Bonanza Helps Explain the Global Financialization of Assets EM debt sales highlight secular stagnation, Macquarie says Ivory Coast, Senegal among countries that have sold this year A spate of frontier and emerging-market bond sales stretching from the grassy highlands of Mongolia to the lush tropics of… Continue reading Emerging Markets
ZeroHedge – It’s Official: “Long Bitcoin” Is The Most Crowded Trade On Wall Street … at least according to BofA’s latest, just released monthly Fund Managers Survey, in which 181 participants with $549bn in AUM responded to dozens of questions, among which “what do you think is the most crowded trade.” In September, for the… Continue reading How Do Fund Managers Really Answer Surveys?