On Wall Street, it's best not to think too hard or to look too closely into the mouths of gift horses. Since making predictions based on actual economic understanding is rare, analysts typically look to provide explanations after the fact. Within the financial services industry, currency traders are perhaps the greatest practitioners of this craft. While they often get the fundamentals completely wrong, it never seems to stop them from offering bizarre theories to explain currency movements.
We’re a little more than a week into the 2018 FIFA World Cup, and so far Russia has surprised experts and fans alike. Expectations were low at best. Because of recent setbacks, including a disastrous performance at the 2016 UEFA European Championship and injuries sustained by key players, the federation ranked a dismal 66th place among Fédération Internationale de Football Association teams—its lowest position ever. The only reason it didn’t have to qualify to compete was because Russia is the host nation. (This is the first time in its 88-year history, by the way, that the World Cup has been held in Eastern Europe.)
Responsible Investing is a relatively new concept in the municipal bond market, but we believe it's well-suited to a market that finances entities and projects intended to serve the public good.
This business expansion has gone on for nine years and most investors think we have to be near the end. In baseball parlance you hear talk that we are in the seventh or eighth inning; nobody seems to believe we are in the second or third. Jamie Dimon of J.P. Morgan has said at a conference we’re in the sixth, which got a lot of attention.
The economic calendar is modest. Volatility is lower even with plenty of news. The summer doldrums have arrived! It provides time for introspection to fill those empty timeslots and pages.
The patriarch of value investing, Ben Graham, once said, “In the short run the market is a voting machine, but in the long run it is a weighing machine.” His statement is just as profound as the day it was first spoken. However, it is timelessly mystifying to most investors.
This memo covers three ways in which securities markets seem to be moving toward reducing the role of people: (a) index investing and other forms of passive investing, (b) quantitative and algorithmic investing, and © artificial intelligence and machine learning.
We have used this quip from the book Why You Win or Lose: The Psychology of Speculation by Fred C. Kelly many times in our missives over the past nearly five decades because the wisdom of its message is timeless. We recalled it last week in many of our meetings in New York City when we heard certain individual investors, as well as portfolio managers (PMs), say “I should have!”
Much has been written about residential mortgage modifications, yet hardly anything has been said about the problem of re-defaults on modified mortgages. In large part, this is due to the paucity of accurate data about borrowers re-defaulting. It is time to clearly lay out how extensive this problem really is, what it means for mortgage markets and the dangers it poses for investors.
The U.S. inflation story made further inroads this month, with year-over-year price growth for consumers and producers alike hitting multiyear highs. U.S. consumer prices expanded at their strongest pace in more than six years, climbing to an annual change of 2.8 percent in May. Prices for final demand goods, meanwhile, grew 3.1 percent, their strongest annual surge since December 2011.
Across the eurozone, political leaders are entering a state of paralysis: citizens want to remain in the EU, but they also want an end to austerity and the return of prosperity. So long as Germany tells them they can’t have both, there can be only one outcome: more pain, more suffering, more unemployment, and even slower growth.
Risk to the euro resurfaces in an unlikely governing coalition and challenging economic agenda, but Italy’s top stocks don’t face the same perils as its government bonds.
When I ask an audience of advisors who wants to be a better salesperson, the room goes silent. I often say “sales” is not a four-letter word (it is five!).
Can you connect to big shot prospects through social media? Most advisors don’t even try. That’s a shame, because I’ve found an extremely effective way to reach just about anyone.
It is not hard to imagine that if Italy's new government proceeds with its ambitious fiscal plans, instituting both a flat tax and a universal basic income, it could blow up the budget deficit. In that case, Italy could quickly find itself out of the eurozone and ring-fenced by capital controls, whether the government intended this or not.
If you live in Texas and have any extra gold bars, coins and/or jewelry lying around that need safekeeping, you’re in luck. The Texas Bullion Depository, the first of its kind in the U.S., officially opened to the public in Austin this week, putting a cap on three years of planning and construction. The private firm managing the facility, Lone Star Tangible Assets, calls it the “world’s most advanced depository.”
This is the fourth of what will be a long-running series highlighting dividend growth stocks that have technically entered bear market territory. Many investors define a bear market as when prices fall at least 20%. After coming out of the true bear market inspired by the Great Recession, stocks have generally been enjoying a very strong and long-lasting bull market.
At Franklin Templeton’s recent Global Investor Forum in New York, our CEO Greg Johnson participated in a panel discussion with three other CEOs in the financial services industry: James Gorman of Morgan Stanley; Jay Hooley of State Street and Barry Stowe of Jackson National Life.
Unlike many other European countries, Italy still has not restored economic growth to its pre-crisis level – a fundamental failing that lies at the heart of many of its political problems. Now that a new anti-establishment government is taking power, it remains to be seen if the economy will be remade, or broken further.
The Federal Reserve has two primary mandates: maximizing employment and stable prices. Congress also included moderating long-term interest rates as part of the Fed’s overall objective, but that should be the offshoot of stable prices. In May the unemployment rate fell to 3.8% which is the lowest since April 2000.
Economists who assure us that advanced-economy debt is completely “safe” sound eerily like those who touted the “Great Moderation” – the supposedly permanent reduction in cyclical volatility – a generation ago. In many cases, they are the same people.
Russ explains why gold is not working as an effective equity hedge, despite higher volatility.
What happened to the UK economy in the first three months of 2018? While some are blaming the weather for an underwhelming +0.1% GDP growth, reality might be far more complex. Unemployment continues to be at all-time lows, wages are rising, and Brexit so far has been harmless.
The future of the European Central Bank’s three-year-old quantitative easing program lies in the balance. Will the bank’s governing council use its scheduled June meeting to extend the program or confirm that asset purchases will end in September? David Zahn, Franklin Templeton’s head of European Fixed Income, believes recent European economic data and political developments in Italy point towards an extension. And he argues that means eurozone interest-rate hikes are unlikely before 2020.
Among the populist ideas that have gained currency are hostility to free trade, a sharp reduction in immigration, the redistribution of income, and nationalism bordering on jingoism. Dambisa Moyo doesn’t like it, and neither does Ian Bremmer.
Kudzu invaded the South, obliterating the healthy and attractive vegetation carefully planted by homeowners. Variable annuity owners are likewise being strangled by excessive fees.
The macro data from the past month continues to mostly point to positive growth. On balance, the evidence suggests the imminent onset of a recession is unlikely.
The Northern Trust Economics team recaps the circumstances that led to this week’s drama in Italy and investigates a slowdown in U.S. business formation.
The current expansion is the second longest recorded, after the '90s boom. And stock market valuations remain full. So we will constantly monitor our overall market risk tools in an attempt to time the end of the bull market. Meanwhile, since alerts have not yet triggered, we will continue to hold shares, and buy others, as long as they’re trading below our FMV estimates. We will worry top down but invest bottom up, buying well managed, appropriately leveraged, high quality enterprises with ever-growing earnings, at discounts to our estimates of their intrinsic value.
Prices will rise—for producers and consumers alike—which is good for gold but a headwind for continued economic growth.
Over the next decade, we will endure increasingly damaging debt crises that culminate in a coordinated global default—“The Great Reset,” as I call it. There are limits in how much leverage the world can handle, and I think we are already beyond them. And that is before we have a global recession. The only question now is how we will manage the collapse.
This week, market watchers around the world are justifiably fixated with the high-stakes, high-drama political developments unfolding in Italy. While a political crisis in the world's 9th largest economy (International Monetary Fund figures, 4/17/18) would normally not be enough to cause an international meltdown, given how thin the global economic ice has become as a result of ever-increasing debt loads, even small disruptions can create systemic problems.
Financial markets have finally woken up to the fact that Italy could soon be ruled by a populist government with designs to take the country out of the eurozone. And, given Italy's tepid economic performance since adopting the single currency a generation ago, there is little reason to think that the current crisis is a one-off event.
Serious gold investors know that May has historically been a weak month for the price of the yellow metal. For the 10-year and 30-year periods, the month delivered negative returns.
Italy’s proposed coalition collapsed over the weekend after the president refused to accept euroskeptic Paolo Savona as Minister of Finance. Markets have since reacted, with Italian government bond yields rising above their eurozone counterparts. Unsurprisingly, with the possibility of another election in the cards, market sentiment has shifted to risk-off in light of the political uncertainty.
First, there was “Grexit,” which was the name given to the possibility that Greece would leave the eurozone. Then, there was “Brexit,” the plan for the U.K.’s exit from the European Union, which is actually happening (at least potentially). Now, we have “Italeave,” which I think sounds better than the other contender, “Italexit.” So what’s going on with Italy?
Massive investor popularity can produce some pretty strange circumstances in the U.S. stock market. Mark Twain said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes!” Today’s strange occurrence has been called a “zero cost of capital” and it rhymes with what happened in 1999-2000.
Advisors should use a few elements from Silicon Valley’s office design to improve success when prospects visit.
For the first time in a long while, geopolitics has been driving oil prices higher in an already tight market. With oil prices recently hitting a four-year high, gasoline prices have been climbing too, and analysts are carefully watching developments including the US withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear pact with Iran and re-imposition of economic sanctions on the country.
The first defaults will occur at the lowest end of the problematic market: high yield or “junk” bonds. They will play a role comparable to subprime mortgages in the last crisis. We’ll see mortgage problems as well, but I think overleveraged companies will be the core problem.
This shouldn’t surprise anyone, but public trust in the federal government is eroding. Sixty years ago, 75 percent of Americans expressed faith in the government to do the right thing “most of the time” or “just about always.” Seventy-five percent! You can’t get 75 percent of people to agree on anything now, as the recent “Laurel or Yanny” video proved.
Stocks have rebounded along with economic data, could we be setting up for a solid summer?
John Williams, one of the newest members of the Federal Open Market Committee, wrote an article titled “The Future Fortunes of R-star: Are They Really Rising?” where he summarized his views on real neutral interest rates.
A strong start for markets in January was quickly replaced by uncertainty and volatility, which continue to this day. How might the rest of the year play out?
The decision to "fire" a client is painfully difficult. Many planners are reluctant to disengage with difficult clients due to a sense of responsibility. If you are contemplating firing some of your clients, the following steps will ease the break-up and ensure a minimum of follow-on damages.
Now that you understand the importance of creating a solid content marketing strategy, it’s time to get published!
In this month's Global Economic Perspective, our Fixed Income Group opines on rising energy prices, US Treasury yields, emerging-market currency pressures and global economic growth.
In-depth write up of Moody's (MCO) highlighting how it fits into YCG's investment framework which focuses on identifying "great business" and "market-timing" mispricings.
Don't let increased volatility throw you off track. We believe key drivers of growth around the world remain in place. Although the pace of global acceleration has slowed a bit recently, economic indicators continue to signal levels of activity consistent with expansion.
Carl Kaufman is the co-president, co-chief executive officer and managing director, fixed income at Osterweis Capital Management. He is the lead portfolio manager for the Strategic Income Fund. That fund has had an annualized return of 6.18% since its inception on 8/30/02. Its performance exceeded the AGG by 278 basis points. I interviewed Carl last week.
