Global markets enjoyed a strong start to the year, marking a steep reversal from the downdraft that maligned the fourth quarter. Weak or decelerating growth in virtually every major economy, coupled with lingering overhangs from international trade frictions, have compelled the major central banks to adopt stimulative policies for the foreseeable future.
The increasing presence of opposite extremes makes the investment environment far more uncertain. It also means investors will have to work harder to meet their goals.
A few weeks ago, we were pleased to announce a partnership with Brookfield Asset Management that created an alternative investment manager with one of the broadest slates of strategies and greatest asset totals. And what question did I get? “Will there still be memos?” Well, here’s your answer.
We discuss network effects as a source of a sustainable competitive advantage and discuss our analytical framework for analyzing such moats.
Life expectancy has started to decline in some of the world's most prosperous countries, and there seems to be a powerful link between that and falling real wages. Come to think of it, there is even a link between austerity and falling life expectancy as the Greeks learned in 2010-2012.
Recession is approaching but not just yet. Yet like the Fed, I am data-dependent and the latest data are not encouraging. Today, we’ll examine this and consider what may have changed.
What happens in China clearly does not stay in China so the outlook for China’s growth in 2019 is one of the keys to how the global economy will perform and how financial markets will respond to that level of growth.
It is critically important to remain as theoretically sound as possible as a large majority of investors have built their portfolios on a foundation of false ideologies. The problem is when reality collides with widespread fantasy.
Through “harmonization” – the broker-dealer community, aided and abetted by the SEC, is destroying the fiduciary standard, while imposing only new “casual disclosure” obligations upon broker-dealers. At its very core, this is an effort to make RIAs/IARs and BDs/RRs look identical. Once this is accomplished, FINRA will swoop in to seek oversight over the “harmonized” broker and investment adviser communities.
A New Normal For The Fed Balance Sheet; How Tariffs Work…and Don't Work; The ECB Goes Back To The TLTRO Well
How much of your portfolio is allocated to private markets? How big is the total opportunity set?
One of the great paradoxes of the asset management industry is that its focus is on designing products that grow assets, yet that’s often not what investors need. Investors want a to participate in the market’s upside but be protected from downside losses. I’m going to talk today with two people who are at the forefront of a revolution in ETF product design to support the growth-driven needs of investors.
With the workforce starting to decline in many countries, we need brisk productivity growth for the economy to prosper, but exactly the opposite is happening. Why is that? In this month's Absolute Return Letter, we take a closer look at a number of negative productivity agents that hold back GDP growth.
The metals and mining industry could be undergoing some dramatic changes in the near future, and it’s important for investors to get in on the ground floor. I’m proud of our track record of getting in early with a number of successful companies.
Over the years, I have always thought that the left’s obsession with global warming was really just an excuse to push through a fully socialist economic agenda. After all, the radical changes that would be required for businesses and consumers to rapidly reduce our carbon footprint could only come about through government mandates and force.
If you've been in the industry long enough, you may have been able to look a client in the eyes and tell them the 3 greatest words an advisor can tell a client. “We did it.”
We have a light economic calendar and a short week. We’ll get earnings reports from another 10% of S&P 500 companies. With plenty of time and little fresh information, I expect plenty of pure speculation about the state of the market.
This week Morgan Stanley projected a 14 percent upside for copper in 2019, based on a widening supply deficit and the surge in global demand for renewable energy and electric vehicles, both of which require tons of the red metal.
A review of last month’s market-moving events across countries and asset classes.
Our millennial advisors push us (the three partners) on our “value to the community.”
Offering account aggregation is an effective way to add value to your client relationships, provide better service and set your firm apart from the competition.
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.
“Some people call it ‘peak gold,’ but I tend to think of it more as ‘peak discovery.’” Meet the brains behind Goldspot Discoveries, a first-of-its-kind quant shop that aims to use AI to revolutionize the mineral exploration business.
Today’s capitalism has a contradiction that is increasingly hard to ignore: lack of competition in key markets. That’s a problem because competition incentivizes producers to get more efficient and reduce prices for consumers. Without competition, you end up with bloated monopolies that may be highly profitable for the owners, but don’t serve the greater cause of economic growth.
Robert Nelson, a portfolio manager with Franklin Templeton Fixed Income Group, believes emerging market corporate debt presents a compelling but under-appreciated investment story. Here he sets out three reasons why investors might consider an allocation to the asset class.
With no-deal Brexit risks increasing and sterling having already experienced a strong year-to-date rally, we are now expecting to see sterling fall against the dollar and euro.
Early on in my career, I learned there are four psychological reasons investors buy (listed from strongest to weakest).
In Keeping At It: The Quest for Sound Money and Good Government, a beautifully crafted autobiography, Pau Volcker recounts the many struggles involved in achieving his aims.
Last year was a watershed in the size of official gold purchases, as central banks added 651.5 tonnes to their holdings. Not only is this a remarkable 74 percent change from 2017, but it’s also the most on record going back to 1971.
Matthews Asia Portfolio Strategist David Dali discusses the new drivers of growth in emerging markets.
We’ve collected the following tributes to Jack Bogle from among the authors who contribute to Advisor Perspectives and other prominent individuals in the investment industry.
A 1997 dark comedy starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert DeNiro, “Wag the Dog” was a film in which a Hollywood director and a spin-doctor collude to fabricate a war in order to distract voters from a presidential sex-scandal. Hilarity ensues. Of course, the irony was that the movie was released just two months before an actual sex-scandal erupted.
It makes little difference to our portfolios whether recession strikes in 2019 or 2020. The benchmarks will drop between 40 and 50%—some more, some less. To the extent that you are exposed to stocks and other financial markets, your portfolio is going to take a hit.
Billionaire Sam Zell just announced that he bought gold for the very first time in his life because, as he puts it, “it is a good hedge.” In a recent Bloomberg interview, the Equity International founder and creator of the real estate investment trust (REIT) admitted to seeing an opportunity in gold’s increasing supply shortage.
Business uncertainty resulting from trade frictions will continue to put downward pressure on economic growth. As a result, investor confidence may remain fragile (recent price declines appear to reflect this). Concerns are unlikely to dissipate soon, but we contend that international growth stocks represent a good investment opportunity.
Markets struggle to price new risks, and the U.S. government shutdown grows in severity.
Americans like to think we are insulated from the world. We have big oceans on either side of us. Geopolitically, they serve as buffers. But economically they connect us to other important markets that are critical to many US businesses. Problems in those markets are ultimately problems for the US, too.
Free from a house view on economies, markets or stocks, J O Hambro CapitalManagement’s (JOHCM) fund managers invariably see the world in different ways. We asked a number of our managers for their thoughts on the outlook for their asset class next year, what they would like to see and the possible surprises that 2019 could bring.
With only one trading day left in 2018, the price of gold has so far beaten the S&P 500 Index for the month of December, the fourth quarter and the year. What might surprise some readers is that it’s also outperformed the market for the century.
Great articles don’t always get the readership they deserve. Here are another 10 that you might have missed, but I believe merit reading…
As is our custom, we conclude the year by reflecting on the 10 most-read articles over the past 12 months. In decreasing order, based on the number of unique readers, those are…
Read Harold Evensky's most recent NewsLetter.
Overoptimism and overconfidence are two well-known psychological traits of our species. They are particularly dangerous in the late stages of an economic cycle where these terrible twins result in investors overestimating return and underestimating risk – a potentially lethal combination of errors.
Wheaton Precious Metals announced that it reached a settlement with the Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA), the equivalent of the IRS. “We expect the stock to react positively to the news given the tax dispute was an overhang,” Credit Suisse analysts shared in a note to investors today.
The yield curve has appeared in quite a few news headlines recently. Why is this technical-sounding tidbit of financial jargon suddenly getting so much attention? The short answer is that the yield curve has a reputation for predicting recessions, and some market watchers are worried recent changes to the curve’s shape are sending a warning signal about the economy.
Business success depends heavily upon the person to person connections that you make. Often we try to make it more complicated than that, but it boils down to the connection human being to human being. Our guest Kim Seltzer, makeover and confidence expert, has helped thousands of people build lasting connections with her Charisma Quotient process and this style advice is readily applicable for any financial advisor who wants to grow his or her business!
Stocks plunged this week on concerns that trade negotiations between the U.S. and China are not running as smoothly as initially thought. Adding to the uncertainty was news of the arrest of Meng Wanzhou, CFO of Chinese tech giant Huawei, the world’s second-largest smartphone manufacturer.
In my never-ending quest to keep you ahead of the curve, I’ll review what’s happening in Europe. This may be a turnabout for European readers who rely on me to describe what’s happening over here. But as you’ll see, we are far more connected than separated by distance.
In this issue, Research Affiliates discusses the market impact of the U.S. midterm elections and its view of what differentiates All Asset’s positioning from its peers.
Should those further from retirement safely allocate more to stocks? I’ll use an example to challenge the popular notion that those with many years left until retirement can safely allocate heavily to stocks. I’ll then demonstrate that pre-retirement investment challenges are more difficult to deal with than generating income after retirement.
