After Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reshuffled his Cabinet on 3 August, the big question is whether his administration can regain public support. In just the last two months, Abe's public approval ratings have plunged to around 30% – low enough to raise red flags.
Howard Marks’ “Memos” are a must-read. Years ago, I was invested in Marks’ hedge fund. We exited our fund of funds business in 2007, though it would have served me well to have stayed in his fund. Like most great investment managers, he keeps risk front of mind.
In July, the Institute for Supply Management’s (ISM) Non-Manufacturing Index fell to an 11-month low of 53.9, 3.5 points below its June reading of 57.4. The index measures the non-manufacturing, services industries such as food services, education, real estate, health care and more.
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 muni backdrop looks benign, but be mindful of potential credit risks.
Financial advisors are facing a myriad of challenges from robo-advisors to the DOL changes, to providing viable income solutions for their clients while being appropriately compensated.
Several myths have taken hold among market watchers lately. Rick seeks to dispel them.
Bond investors are from Mars, and central bankers are from Venus – or so suggests the bond market’s negative reaction to signals that the exceptional monetary policy accommodation of the last decade is winding down. Risk-asset markets, however, are ignoring the red flags that the bond markets are waving. Are they right?
Some argue that active management is a zero-sum game, so investing passively—relying on the wisdom of crowds—is better. How strong is that logic?
The USD is off to its worst start since 1985, down about 9%. In the chart below (courtesy of Bianco Research), it appears the USD is tracing its performance in 1985 quite closely.
Our Summer Outlook comes a bit late this year as we were traveling in the weeks after July 4th. Our itinerary included the San Francisco area, the Washington DC area, Castle Rock and Colorado Springs.
One hour after beginning a new job which involved moving a pile of bricks from the top of a two story house to the ground, a construction worker in Peterborough, Ontario suffered an accident which hospitalized him. He was instructed by his employer to fill out an accident report.
At the height of the technology bubble, the median of the most reliable market valuation measures we follow (those most strongly correlated with actual subsequent S&P 500 total returns) briefly reached an apex 178% above historical norms that had been regularly approached or breached over the completion of every market cycle in history.
In 1965, Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, predicted that the number of transistors on integrated circuits would double every two years. This is the basis of “Moore’s law,” and it’s why we currently have pocket-sized devices that are more powerful than 1980s supercomputers that took up entire rooms.
With uncertain market conditions, income investors can look to dividend investing as a strategy for different market conditions. This week’s news also looks at how income investors can deal with increasing interest rates.
Today I will show you a simple indicator that has an excellent recession-forecasting record, according to research by the Federal Reserve itself. Though the Fed’s own wacky policies may have weakened this early-warning system’s reliability, an interpretive adjustment can restore its usefulness.
We demonstrate a smart beta that produces positive excess returns from sustainably faster growth in EPS. This simple, systematic strategy represents a significant improvement from today’s growth indices that fail to produce faster growth in EPS and have provided negative excess returns.
We are not suggesting that the UK economy has been performing in a stellar fashion. Far from it. But in a low-growth world (mired in what the OECD likes to refer to as a “low-growth trap”) the UK hasn’t been anywhere near bottom of the table.
Much of the world has been waging a cold currency war since the autumn of 2016, and so far the winner is Donald Trump. The dollar rally that followed the U.S. election is over, and this past week the U.S. Dollar Index (DXY, which tracks the dollar’s value versus a weighted basket of major currencies) sank to its lowest level in more than a year.
“Dual mandate” is one of the most commonly used phrases in U.S. central banking. The current Chair of the Federal Reserve often mentions it in both speeches and testimony to Congress. Not surprisingly, this is an extremely hot topic in monetary economics, and execution of this mandate has profound significance.
I’m in the process of writing another book, going into great depth regarding one of the most important things discussed in my book The Most Important Thing: cycles, their causes, and what to do about them. It will be out next year, but this memo will give you a preview regarding one of the most important cyclical phenomena.
I continue to believe that the two most important issues receiving inadequate investor attention are productivity and the role of central bank liquidity in the performance of financial markets. Productivity is critical to both earnings improvement and a rising standard of living.
After a strong first half to 2017 for equities, the message for the remainder of the year is to look for returns more carefully in the second half says Neil Dwane, global strategist for Allianz Global Investors. The “country factor” will be key: We believe investors can no longer rely on a rising tide of cyclical data to lift all boats.
Psychologists have uncovered a surprising number of idiosyncrasies from making the soundest choice in many situations. These lapses explain some of the mysterious up and downdrafts that can lift and lower stock prices. Understanding them can make successful investing easier. The most important findings arise from answers to a pair of questions.
Asia’s integration into world financial markets may be accelerating.
Supply and demand seems to have been placed on the backburner in today’s world of prognosticating inflation, employment, and GDP. The first point is the supply of publicly traded stock in the US. The second point is the supply of money.
The first week of earnings did little to change the overall market’s trend. In fact, it may have provided reasons to reinforce it. While the week's reports were mostly beats at the top and bottom lines (just like three months ago), the reception to some of the more cyclical company earnings reports (Banks and Industrials) were very unwelcoming.
Global equities have risen 7% in the past 3 months and 16% in the past year, yet fund managers continue to hold significant amounts of cash, suggesting lingering doubts and fears.
When PIMCO professionals gather for our annual Secular Forum to discuss the long-term global economic outlook, views on Europe invariably gravitate on two themes: anemic GDP growth and political risk.
At a conference in Chicago this week, following up on last week’s letter, Keep Dancing but with a Sharp Eye on the Tea Leaves, an advisor client asked me what my favorite “tea leaf” might be. When one of the greatest investors of our time, Ray Dalio, tells us to keep an eye on the exit door we should take note. But how? And when?
I am concerned that another major crisis will ensue by the end of 2018 – though it is possible that a salutary combination of events, aided by complacency, could let us muddle through for another few years. But there is another recession in our future (there is always another recession), and it’s going to be at least as bad as the last one was, in terms of the global pain it causes.
In this month’s Global Economic Perspective, Franklin Templeton Fixed Income Group dives into diverging central bank policy and weighs in on whether the European Central Bank is likely to be less accommodative—and what its timing might look like.
Today I want to discuss reports that global debt levels are at all-time highs, and what this means for your investment decisions going forward.
What explains the fact that municipal bond yields are only slightly lower than equivalent Treasury bonds, giving muni investors a much higher taxable-equivalent yield? The answer lies in their liquidity, which is good news, especially for buy-and-hold investors of individual bonds.
Low Treasury yields and high equity prices aren’t necessarily contradictory. Both suggest expectations of continued unexciting growth, low inflation and a steady Fed. What could go wrong?
The Federal Reserve is likely to begin normalizing its balance sheet in 2017. Why hasn’t this news rattled the bond market?
For investors in search of a way to boost income and diversify their bond portfolios, now may be the time to consider what local-currency emerging-market bonds offer.
“It is a Riddle, Wrapped in a Mystery, Inside an Enigma: but Perhaps There is a Key” - Winston Churchill
We suspect that the Fed has already lost substantial credibility, but that investors prefer to look the other way as long as financial-asset values remain intact. It is, in our opinion, an “everybody knows the dice are loaded” situation that could portend an even sharper, impossible-to-escape downdraft once confidence is dislodged.
Invesco Fixed Income shares its views of rates around the world.
Ray Dalio, chairman of Bridgewater Associates, wrote last week that the global economy is heading toward a new stage where markets won’t get the same level of support from the global monetary policy makers. “The directions of policy are reversing,” he noted.
After three disappointing years in the middle of this decade, it's been a smoother course for hedge-fund strategies over the past 12 months. K2 Advisors' Senior Managing Director Brooks Ritchey offers his analysis to explain why he sees some tailwinds ahead.
Markets seem not to care what the media or polls have to say. The Dow Jones Industrial Average continues to hit new all-time highs. Even though it’s stalled a few times, the “Trump rally” appears to be in full-speed-ahead mode, more than eight months after the election.
With Market Indices at or Close to All-Time Highs, Investors Puzzle Over the Course Ahead. Meanwhile, The Slow-Growth Economy Is Perceived as the New "Goldilocks Scenario."
Raising the federal funds rate is just one part of the Fed’s plan for higher interest rates. Another part, according to Steve Malin, investment strategist at Allianz Global Investors, is the somewhat tricky process of purging $2 trillion in US Treasury and agency securities from the Fed’s balance sheet.
A review of last month’s market-moving events across countries and asset classes.
We’re in a late-cycle, momentum-driven market, where valuation is at an extreme. Momentum can drive markets beyond fundamentals for an extended period. No investment process is going to pick the peak in the cycle, but we’d lean out as the risks increase.
Since the global financial crisis, the notion of what constitutes an appropriate liquidity management and capital preservation strategy has become a source of heated debate among professional institutional investors and retail-oriented allocators alike, with varying opinions on how to balance a preference for returns against the need for immediate liquidity and capital preservation.
One of the biggest challenges for bond investors today is keeping income flowing without taking too much risk. We think a balanced barbell approach can help.
