The Wall Street Journal – Wall Street Needs You to Borrow Against Your Stock Wall Street brokerages have been selling billions of dollars in loans backed by stocks and bonds, a trend that yields lucrative fees for the firms but poses risks for borrowers. While banks don’t always report these loans in the same way,… Continue reading Wall Street Pushes Securities-Backed Loans
The Financial Times – US prowess in lifting profit leaves European groups in the shade Earnings season is here, bringing with it the traditional excuses to buy stocks, and for managements to get out their spin to investors. Continuing records for US indices show that US companies continue to be peerless at the game of… Continue reading US Earnings vs. European Earnings
Bloomberg Businessweek – Lisa Abramowicz: Foreign Credit Traders Just Can’t Quit America U.S. company bonds look overvalued, but there’s nowhere else to turn. Foreign investors should be sick of U.S. corporate bonds. They’ve already bought a record amount of them. And they’re earning less yield to own them than they once did. Yet despite some recent rumblings about interest possible waning,… Continue reading Foreigners Can’t Quit U.S. Credit
OPEN A Closer Look at the Balance Sheet Reduction Program Webcast In our latest webcast, Pete Forbes looks at his post titled A Closer Look at the Balance Sheet Reduction Program. The Fed has laid out its plan and expectations are firming around a September 2017 start to the reduction program. The Fed… Continue reading A Closer Look at the Balance Sheet Reduction Program Webcast
MoneyBeat (WSJ Blog) – Consumers Are Confident. That Should Spook Investors. Confidence is in no short supply among U.S. consumers. Equity investors should take note. The Conference Board’s gauge of consumer confidence rose to 121.1 in July from 117.3 last month, according to a release Tuesday, marking its second highest reading since 2000 (following a… Continue reading The Divide Between Soft And Hard Data
View PDF The Federal Reserve – Federal Reserve issues FOMC statement Consistent with its statutory mandate, the Committee seeks to foster maximum employment and price stability. The Committee continues to expect that, with gradual adjustments in the stance of monetary policy, economic activity will expand at a moderate pace, and labor market conditions will… Continue reading Understanding Fedspeak
The Wall Street Journal – Greg Ip: The Myth of Trump’s Do-Nothing Presidency To gauge impact, go beyond the laws he has signed to the vast authority he wields through departments and agencies that apply the law Six months into his presidency, Donald Trump’s detractors portray him as a do-nothing president with no big wins on issues such as health care,… Continue reading Updating The Trump Trade
Marketwatch – Abnormally placid stock market volatility isn’t just a U.S. thing—it’s global U.S. stock market investors may be having that squeamish “it’s quiet out there…too quiet” feeling, but the lack of market pullbacks isn’t just limited to domestic markets as one strategist points out, a lack of stock-market volatility has become a global phenomenon. In… Continue reading Financial Markets Keeping the ‘Do Not Disturb’ Sign on the Door
BlackRock – Dan Chamby: Why security selection matters With the emergence of more winners and losers in the market, investors may benefit from differentiated exposure. price advances in a handful of large technology companies have disproportionately contributed to U.S. stock returns in 2017. Removing the performance of Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Google (aka Alphabet) from the… Continue reading More On FAANMG Running The Stock Market
Bloomberg – The Market Will Kill Oil Before the Government Does European governments are making a big splash, pledging an assault on traditional cars to help clean up polluted air in cities. The latest strike came Wednesday in the U.K., which says it will ban the sale of diesel- and gasoline-powered cars by 2040. Those plans… Continue reading Out With Gas, In With Electricity
Bloomberg – Why You’re Not Getting a Raise No matter where you are in the world, you’re probably not getting much of a raise—and chances are, that’s not changing any time soon. Even though the job market is picking up in the U.S., Britain, Japan and a host of other countries, the growth in pay… Continue reading Where’s The Wage Growth?