The Financial Times – Amazon is creating more jobs than it destroys Americans who have lost their retail jobs since 1994 must rue the year when Mr Bezos rented a Seattle garage and started rigging up experiments such as the “one-click” checkout. Yet the efficiencies of online retail lie in scant inventory and cheap property,… Continue reading ECommerce Job Growth Outpaces Retail Job Loss
Barrons – Active or Passive? Why You Should Use Both The active/passive debate has misdirected the attention of many investors, and has led even financial advisors to think they must make an all-in decision on one or the other. So here’s more good news: You don’t. For an optimal portfolio, think in terms of active… Continue reading Active vs. Passive
Barrons – The Leftovers, S&P 500 Edition The market may be powering to new highs, but there are 15 companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index that have been left behind. Not only have they not kept pace with the index’s 274% rise since the March 9, 2009, low of 666, but they have… Continue reading 15 S&P 500 Stocks Are Still Below Their 2009 Price!
MoneyBeat (WSJ Blog) – The Dollar May Be Cheaper, But It’s Not Cheap This year’s slide in the U.S. dollar still leaves it the second-most overvalued among the currencies of 29 major economies, according to a new report by the International Monetary Fund. The IMF’s 2017 External Sector Report estimated that the greenback was roughly… Continue reading The IMF Offers Fair Value Estimates For Currencies
The Wall Street Journal – Next Up for GOP Congress: Raising the Debt Ceiling Republicans are leaving town for an August recess after a failed attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act. When they return in September, they’ll have just 12 working days to avert another big problem. In a letter to lawmakers Friday, U.S.… Continue reading More On The Debt Ceiling
The Wall Street Journal – OPEC Has a Crippling Problem: Its Members Can’t Stop Pumping Eight months after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries announced a plan for its 14 members and 10 allied countries to withhold almost 2% of the world’s oil every day to boost prices, seven of the 11 OPEC members… Continue reading OPEC’s Production Problem
Bloomberg – Washington Chaos Lulls Bond Market to Sleep While the U.S. government is reeling from Twitter posts, failed legislation and acrimonious spats, debt investors are trading less and less. High-yield corporate bond volumes have dropped 17 percent since the end of June relative to the same period last year, while investment-grade trading has fallen 4 percent.
Bloomberg – Bond Investors Are Smarter Than Stock Pickers, Study Finds The “smart” money may deserve its reputation after all. High-yield bonds moving with the ebbs and flows of U.S. earnings announcements tend to predict stock returns for a slew of issuers — particularly firms with a modest level of institutional equity ownership. So stock… Continue reading This Settles It…Bond Geeks > Stock Geeks
The Wall Street Journal – The Productivity Puzzle Increasing productivity is more crucial than ever to promote economic growth as the U.S. fertility rate slows. But in the U.S. and other advanced economies, productivity growth has significantly slowed over the past few decades, despite continuing advances in digital technologies. What’s going on? Earlier this year… Continue reading A Look At Productivity Growth’s Decline
Reuters – Fed balance sheet plan may equal three rate hikes for emerging markets According to calculations by IIF, one of the most authoritative trackers of global capital flows, this will slice just over $200 billion off the U.S. central bank’s balance sheet next year, assuming it keeps reinvesting some of the money for the time… Continue reading ECB Likely the Most Watched Central Bank in 2018
The Wall Street Journal – Mnuchin Says He Has No Intent to Prioritize Payments if Debt Limit Isn’t Raised Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told lawmakers Thursday he has “no intent” to prioritize certain government payments and delay others if Congress fails to raise the federal borrowing limit. “I think that doesn’t make sense,” he told… Continue reading Mnuchin Reiterates His Stance On Payment Prioritization