Those on Wall Street and the Fed do not see the debt elephant in the room. Even worse, they see it but ignore that perpetuating the problem serves their interests best.
he current inflationary surge is temporary. When flexible prices, especially some of those mentioned, normalize, inflation is likely to follow suit.
Forcing the price of money to absurdly low or even negative rates is slowly but constantly detracting from economic progress and ripping the social fabric of our nation.
Much is being written on the state of extreme equity and bond valuations. Surprisingly, there is little research focusing on what keeps valuations at such levels. Liquidity is our asset bubble's lift and worth closely examining to better assess the markets' potential flight path.
The eventual tapering of QE will foster a change in investor behaviors. This article focuses on bond yields and a few interest-rate-sensitive equity sectors to provide forward guidance on how fixed income and interest-rate-sensitive assets may perform in a tapering environment.
The level of confidence in economic and market forecasts is remarkably high. There is nary a mention of debilitating inflation and no recognition of the troubling deflationary hurricane off at sea.
While investors are enthusiastic, the odds are growing that the Noah effect will come sooner than they think. The math is clear that returns over the next 10 years will pale in comparison to the last.
For those who elect to take passive strategies, like TDFs, assess your risk profile and that of the markets and invest accordingly.
Someone must pay for rampant federal spending.
In this article, I dissect Operation Twist. I also look back at Operation Twist 2.0 circa 2011- 2012 and assess its effectiveness and how it impacted various asset classes.
Short-term interest rates are approaching zero percent and will likely be negative shortly. The culprit is an unusual circumstance at the U.S. Treasury.
Inflation has been missing in action because there has been a collapse in the velocity of money.
The Fed juices the stock market in four ways.
Of the many tales being told to justify record equity valuations, low interest rates are among the more popular. However, that is only half the story.
Government legislation designed to limit executive compensation runs afoul of economists and academia who chose to base executive compensation on “performance.”
The United States faces a $3.1 trillion annual deficit supported with interest rates at or near zero. The Fed and government are rapidly exhausting their arsenal to fight current and future recessions. Equally troubling, almost all of their actions offer little or no future benefit, but the costs stay with us.
The massive surge in passive strategies' popularity has pushed the market to the brink of instability. Instability can result in price surges to unprecedented valuations.
Investors, especially those with limited experience, are declaring that value is dead. Those who act on that belief will suffer at the hands of Mr. Market.
A strong understanding of market dynamics exposes some valuable gems. When the time comes, these stocks will make playing defense productive.
The current environment may be more uncertain and riskier than any we have seen in our lifetimes. Yet, corporate bond spreads say the future has never been more certain.
Value (investing) is dead. Long live value investing. Such certainly seems to be the mantra as investors continue to pile into growth stocks while rationalizing valuations using methodologies which historically have not worked well.
Unlike passive investors, who buy at any price, active managers police markets to drive price discovery. But the active police has been defunded.
Historically low bond yields threaten the diversification value of bonds in the traditional 60/40 allocation.
The appearance of a record-long economic expansion was fueled by expanding levels of debt and corporate share buybacks. The façade of recovery, a soaring stock market, convinced most people that it was real.
Economic devastation will not heal itself in months or quarters and disappear, even if the virus does. The implications of bankruptcy and joblessness and a host of other financial, psychological, and societal issues dictate the path going forward.
The entirety of the financial media and many on Wall Street believe a V-shaped economic recovery is in our future. While I hope they are right, it would be foolish to take such analysis and, quite frankly, unwarranted optimism, at face value.
Most investors are unable to grasp why the Fed’s QE actions have been ineffective. In this article, I explain why today is different from the past.
In this time of global crisis, thoughts of the now-canceled NCAA “March Madness” basketball tournament may be the farthest thing on our minds. But concerns for your clients’ financial futures have been heightened by the recent volatility. My article, which I wrote before the coronavirus crisis, reflects on a valuable parallel between predicting a national champion and achieving a desired investment return.
The state of monetary policy explains why so many people are falling behind and why wealth inequality is at levels last seen almost 100 years ago.
Value investing is an active management strategy that considers company fundamentals and the valuation of securities to acquire that which is undervalued. But as Graham and Dodd defined it, passive strategies are not investing; they are speculating.
If the Fed is papering over problems in the overnight funding market, we are left to question its understanding of global funding markets and the global banking system’s ability to weather a more significant disruption than the preview we observed in September.
Since the financial crisis, investors, market analysts and observers are helplessly watching the Fed, a guardian that does not realize the market is drowning. The Fed, the lifeguard of the market, is unaware of the signs of distress and unable to diagnose the problem.
Since Volcker, the Fed has been run by self-described liberals and conservatives preaching easy money. Their extraordinary policies of the last 20 years are based on creating more debt to support the debt of yesteryear. Those economic leaders show little to no regard for tomorrow and the consequences that arise from their policies.
The turmoil from the mid-September crisis in the repo funding market has not subsided. Indeed, some are calling for aggressive policy actions to prevent a recurrence. Regardless of what those policies are called, they are nothing more than thinly disguised quantitative easing.
On September 16, banks were unwilling or unable to lend on a collateralized basis in the repo market, even with the promise of large risk-free profits. This behavior pointed to the end of the market stimulus that has been around for the past decade.
Is “invest” the right word to describe an asset that when held to maturity guarantees a loss of capital?
I explore a few different ways that President Trump may try to weaken the dollar.
The Fed continues to play an outsized role in influencing asset valuations that are historically high. As such, it is incumbent upon investors to understand when the Fed may be on the precipice of making a policy error. If asset prices rest on confidence in the Fed, what will happen when said confidence erodes?
If you think the Fed may only lower rates by 50 or even 75 basis points, you are grossly underestimating them.
Two of the largest holders of U.S. Treasury debt (China and the Federal Reserve) are no longer buying as aggressively as they once did. More concerning, this is occurring as the amount of Treasury debt required to fund government spending is growing rapidly. The consequences of this drastic change in the supply and demand picture for U.S. Treasury debt are largely being ignored.
The purpose of the article is to define money and currency and discuss their differences and risks. It is with this knowledge that we can better appreciate the path that massive deficits and monetary tomfoolery are putting us on and what we can do to protect ourselves.
Before Glass-Steagall was abolished, financial institutions accounted for 20% of total corporate profits. Over the last 18 years, that amount has doubled to 40%. Banks do not innovate; their profits represent a missed opportunity for someone else to innovate.
A recession is coming. As Warren Buffett’s top lieutenant Charlie Munger points out, successful navigation comes down to trying to make as few mistakes as possible.
Regardless of the Fed’s characterization of a normal balance sheet, the normalization process is far from normal. What the Fed is doing is redefining “normal” to support inflated and over-valued asset prices and accommodate an unruly market. This will only aggravate any deeper problems lurking.
I use Gilligan’s Island as a means of illustrating productivity and its importance for the health of an economy and the prosperity of its people.
This article examines the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy objectives and their stated inflation goals to better appreciate the role they play in rising wealth and income inequality gaps.
The economy is in the late stages of an economic expansion. Just as low tides follow high tides, we can use prior cycles as a guide to consider prudent, late-stage portfolio positioning.
Can the president of the United States fire the chairman of the Fed? If so, what might be the implications?
Thomas Piketty and many other economists ignore the fact that the world runs most fairly and efficiently when individuals are free to pursue their separate interests. Said differently, free-market capitalism, although imperfect, remains the single best means of relieving people from the ubiquity of scarcity.
This article considers the juxtaposition of colliding worldviews and the unified message that voters across the political spectrum are sending. While many investors are aware of the political change afoot, very few have considered how said changes will affect the economy and financial markets.
