The economic calendar is especially important. Several housing reports, JOLTs, and the final estimate for Q3 GDP lead the list. Despite this, I suspect a powerful draw from the Gregorian calendar. It is time for those annual forecasts!
Predicting a major economic or financial event—whether that’s a recession, market downturn or even your own retirement—requires that you also take action. Otherwise your prediction was meaningless.
In the U.S., between one quarter and one third of all assets managed are done so with an ESG or SRI mandate. Outside the U.S., that percentage is even higher. The Vitium Global Fund, formerly the Vice Fund, buys what most ESG/SRI investors scorn, stocks in the tobacco, alcoholic beverage, gaming and aerospace/defense industries.
One of the best ways to “supercharge” your gold position is with precious metal royalty and streaming companies. Think Franco-Nevada, Wheaton Precious Metals, Royal Gold and others.
As Thanksgiving comes to an end, and the busy holiday shopping season begins, here are some need-to-know numbers you may have missed from this past week.
Like particles in a super collider, opposing forces of American culture smashed together this past weekend on a historic football field in Connecticut. And like a physics experiment, the resulting impact shed light on the state of the country and provides us all with a ready framed discussion for the Thanksgiving weekend.
In the bond market, staying positive is easier said than done.
Should just being “employed” make people/workers happy? On one level, any job is better than no job. But we also derive much of our identities and self-esteem from our work. If you aren’t happy with it, you’re probably not happy generally. Unhappy people can still vote and are often easy marks for shameless politicians to manipulate. Their spending patterns change, too. So it ends up affecting everyone, even those who are happy.
The media’s inequality narrative completely ignores the fact that the global demonstrations are, at the end of the day, in response to government incompetence and failed socialist policies.
A review of last month’s market-moving events across countries and asset classes.
I have been studying ways of fighting major crises around the world for the last 30 years ever since I lived through one of the most devastating economic, social, and political crises in the history of the 20th century.
Today I want to focus on that “entering a rough period” part. The signs are growing clearer and the bumps bigger.
It’s been a largely solid run for U.S. stocks in 2019. With the year now in its final quarter, Tony DeSpirito addresses three questions on investors’ minds.
Read Harold Evensky's latest Newsletter.
How do I get my financial advisors to understand they don’t know everything about their clients?
Are you just starting off or have you been at it for years? Here are seven essentials business skills for every advisor.
The economic calendar is a light one in sharp contrast to last week’s. That was a good time to observe the market reaction to a wide range of news. Now is the time for investors to use the information.
Investors may assume they have adequate exposure to gold because they’re invested in a commodities fund. But many of these funds have a relatively small weighting in gold, and so their gold exposure is much smaller than they realized.
The evidence is overwhelming that automation has positively impacted total factor productivity (TFP) for years, i.e. GDP growth continues to benefit from the digital revolution despite the fact GDP growth is rather pedestrian these years.
Investors are increasingly asking whether the macroeconomic growth cycle still exists, and, if so, where are we in it? The answers to these important questions have real implications for the way equity investors should think about their portfolios.
Listen... do you hear that? A bubble is popping. No, we aren’t talking about the stock market... well, at least not the stock market you’re probably thinking about. Generally, public companies have the economics to back up their lofty valuations, even if those valuations are, well, lofty. It is the market for private companies, specifically those backed by venture capital (VC), that looks truly bubblelicious.
Does a prosperous global society need access to energy supplies that grow faster than the population? Conventional wisdom says yes, but a new book tackles this question and reaches the surprising and optimistic conclusion that we can live better while consuming less energy and fewer material resources.
Although the relative performance of the Wasatch investment strategies was mixed during the third quarter — some strategies were a bit ahead of their benchmarks and some were a bit behind— the 2019 year-to-date and longer-term results (i.e., five years) have been exceptional across most of our strategies.
If you’re committed to helping your clients achieve their financial outcomes, don’t avoid discussing taxes.
The First Eagle Global Fund (SGENX) reflects the teachings of Benjamin Graham and Warren Buffett. In this interview, the three managers of the fund discuss a number of topics, including why they hold a large position in gold, why the market will favor value investors on a long-term basis and their views of ESG investing in the context of the companies they own.
I remain bullish going forward despite signs that the world could be facing its worst economic slowdown since the financial crisis. The reason for my bullishness is simple: Bad news is good news.
Negative interest rates are nothing short of a mystery; they’re likely to throw off whatever we knew about the financial world and how things worked in the past. With more than $17 trillion of global debt trading at nominal yields below zero — and about double when considering inflation — this phenomenon has prompted differing perspectives about its purpose and consequences. Howard Marks offers his in this memo, in which he discusses why negative rates have become prevalent, what implications they might have, whether they will reach the U.S., and what investors can do as they navigate these uncharted waters.
The primary purpose of this article on the importance of forecasting the future results of a business is offered to illustrate the conceptual validity of forecasting earnings (and every other metric) as the key to long-term investor success.
Brian Smedley is head of macroeconomic and investment research at Guggenheim Partners. In this interview, he explains why his team is forecasting a recession in mid-2020 and how advisors should position portfolios in response.
Tourism has traditionally helped peace and understanding spread across borders, and we’re hopeful that it will do the same today. It’s also good for commerce, especially for airlines and the travel industry in general.
Testing times for relations in this challenging epoch.
In the past three years, oil and gas discoveries made by conventional means have fallen to an incredible seven-decade low. What’s more, a “significant rebound is not expected,” says IHS Markit. Find out what’s driving discoveries lower!
It has been a good year for U.S. investors. The global economic slowdown and geopolitical turmoil created a nearly irreversible thirst for super safe assets...
The press has been reporting on a trade spat between Japan and South Korea, ostensibly tied to South Korean anger over Japan’s behavior in the runup to World War II. The dispute is only the latest chapter in a long history of conflict between Korea and Japan.
With $13 trillion of investment grade corporate and government bonds having negative yields, fixed income investors are increasingly looking at higher yielding emerging market debt.
While U.S. stocks emerged out of their tight range a couple weeks ago, they have yet to surpass their July highs—as trade uncertainties remain, economic data continues to be mixed, and cloudy monetary policy and political outlooks persist.
In Part I, we reviewed the U.S. current account problem, examined how the persistent deficit affects the economy, and discussed how the U.S. current account deficit is tied to American hegemony and ways the deficit could be addressed.
Last week’s That Time Keynes Had a Point letter brought many more comments than usual. Apparently Keynes is still provocative 73 years after his death, no matter what you say about him. But my real point was about the twisted economic thought that is having dangerous effects on us all. And we can’t blame it just on Keynes.
Given the backdrop of a slowing global economy and shaky investor sentiment tied to trade tensions, Franklin Templeton Multi-Asset Solutions’ Ed Perks and Gene Podkaminer are calling for an active investment approach.
Fed is set to ease, ECB eases and mortgage refinancing takes off.
The price of gold has beaten the S&P 500 Index over a number of different time periods, even the century (so far!). The yellow metal, however, has also outperformed arguably the greatest living investor, Warren Buffett.
The economic calendar is normal with an emphasis on the consumer. Both PPI and CPI data will be reported, but little change is expected. Central bank fans will have to make do with the ECB Thursday announcement.
In this interview, the retired FPA managing partner and portfolio manager expresses his criticism of monetary policies, and how investors should position their portfolios in response.
For fiscal year 2020, the federal budget deficit is expected to hit a massive $1 trillion—the first time in U.S. history that it will have expanded so rapidly in a time of peace and economic stability.
My learning goal each year is to read at least 40 business-related non-fiction books. Here is what I’ve read in the past year.
For years, economists have disagreed whether ageing is inflationary or dis-inflationary. Ever since IMF published a controversial paper in 2015, the debate has raged, but I have finally concluded that ageing is most definitely dis-inflationary (and perhaps even outright deflationary), and here is why.
While cash can be comforting, it may come at a cost to an investor’s ending wealth.
The performance of U.S. value stocks over the last decade has led many to wonder whether the value premium has been completely eroded. New research from GMO shows that this was due to changes in relative valuations that favored growth over value, but now value stocks are priced attractively.
More than a year after the start of the U.S.-China trade war, we’re finally starting to see consumer prices increase. Core inflation, which excludes food and energy, rose to a six-month high of 2.2 percent year-over-year in July.
