The second quarter was marked with market volatility from geopolitical tensions, the president’s tweets, and “America first” rhetoric.
We are coming to the mid-year point for 2018, and the past six months have felt like six years. Markets have experienced a significant uptick in volatility, yet equity investors may not have much to show for all their troubles.
The economic calendar is a light one, and many regular participants are on vacation. The most important data include PPI, CPI, and JOLTS, the best read on a tightening labor market.
Templeton Global Macro makes a compelling case that finding attractive opportunities in emerging markets lies in distinguishing the more resilient countries from the rest.
As expert poker player Annie Duke explains in her book, Thinking in Bets, one of the more common mistakes amateurs make is the tendency to equate the quality of a decision with the quality of its outcome. Poker players call this trait “resulting.”
With trade war rhetoric growing hotter, Presidents Trump and Xi still have time to head to the negotiating table.
Uncle Sam has made too many promises to too many people, with little regard for its future ability to fulfill them. These are debt. Worse, some of them are additional debt on top of the obligations we already see on the national balance sheet. Even worse, entire generations have planned their retirement lives around the government fulfilling those promises. If those promises aren’t met, their lifestyles will indeed become a potential train wreck.
2017 was a great year for the economy and financial markets, and we started 2018 with high hopes for even faster growth and continued market gains. But between the stock market pullback early in the year; the slowdown in economic growth; and the rising political risks in Asia, with North Korea, and in Europe, with Britain and Italy, expectations softened. Perhaps 2017 was the end of the cycle after all.
When most investors think about traditional real estate investment trust (REIT) investment opportunities, they often think about the “four major food groups” of real estate — the retail, office, residential and industrial sectors. While these sectors continue to be a major component of REIT investing, they are increasingly being joined by nontraditional REIT sectors.
Modern Europe’s (and Canada and Australia and…) vaunted social welfare programs have helped many people, but they haven’t eliminated poverty, nor let everyone retire in comfort. Could they simply have shifted spending forward, leaving future generations with the bill? Today, we’ll explore that question as part of my continuing Train Wreck series.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.”
Kudzu invaded the South, obliterating the healthy and attractive vegetation carefully planted by homeowners. Variable annuity owners are likewise being strangled by excessive fees.
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.
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.
Socially responsible investing on an institutional level, where one body makes “socially responsible” capital allocation decisions for a pool of investors, is a utopian concept, just like socialism. It is simply impractical.
In this issue, the Economics team looks at current recession risks in the U.S. and eurozone, and explores how rising oil prices will affect U.S. consumers.
This week I had the pleasure to attend Consensus 2018 in New York, the premiere gathering for the who’s who in blockchain, bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Attendance doubled from last year to an estimated 8,500 people, all of them packed in a Hilton built for only 3,000. Ticket sales alone pulled in a whopping $17 million, while event booths—the largest of which belonged to Microsoft and IBM—generated untold millions more.
I’ve been saying for some time that the next financial crisis will bring a major debt crisis. But as you’ll see today, it is a small part, maybe the opening event, of a rapidly-approaching train wreck. We’ll need several weeks to tease out all the causes and consequences, so this letter will be the first in a series.
The overall profile of market conditions continues to feature: 1) hypervaluation on the measures we find best-correlated with actual subsequent S&P 500 total returns, coupled with 2) continued deterioration in our measures of market internals, which are the most reliable tools we’ve found to gauge the psychological inclination of investors toward speculation or risk-aversion.
A review of last month’s market-moving events across countries and asset classes.
Today, we are finding income with a margin of safety in certain industries where we believe the threat of disruption is overblown. This is not to suggest that these industries (which include advertising, automobiles and retail) will not face disruption, but rather that the magnitude - or the timing - of the threat may be overstated.
The economic calendar is normal, with an emphasis on inflation data. The week will begin with analysis of the annual Berkshire Hathaway meeting, the wisdom of Buffett and Munger, and a multi-hour CNBC program including Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, and Bill Gates.
The bull market in U.S. stocks, which started on March 9, 2009, gets little respect. Those who have been bullish, and right, are mocked as "perma-bulls," while "perma-bears," who have been repeatedly wrong, are quoted endlessly.
Call it the news of the year, perhaps even of the decade. For the first time since the Korean Peninsula was divided in 1948, leaders of the two warring nations met late last week in what had the look and feel of a jovial reconciliation between two estranged family members. Kim Jong-un of North Korea and President Moon Kae-in of South Korea made a number of important, though tentative, breakthroughs, including an agreement to denuclearize the peninsula and a pledge to revisit several infrastructure projects that would help bring some economic unity to the two Koreas.
It is essential that advisors proactively talk with their clients to determine if a DAF would be appropriate, how much and which assets should be donated, and which DAF sponsor would be ideal since on their own, the clients may select the wrong one.
The rise of populism has been fueled by rhetoric bemoaning the downward plight of the middle class, and that chorus has been joined by many from the left. But are we really worse off than we were a generation or a century ago? Not according to Steven Pinker, whose new book documents the dramatic improvement in lives across the globe.
I’m bullish, but I don’t expect bitcoin to test $20,000 again in the short term, especially before July. That’s when G20 finance ministers are scheduled to present their recommendations on how cryptocurrencies should be regulated.
Written in 1606, Shakespeare’s words are just as relevant today. Tweets and eye-catching headlines dominate the news cycle and many conversations, but when you parse them for impactful content, you realize it’s mostly just white noise.
With sky-high valuations in the US stock market, and what we believe is a tech bubble that has dangerous implications for other areas of the market, we suggest four actions investors can take now to avoid the inevitable bursting of the bubble, and which will likely benefit their portfolios’ long-term performance potential.
After a decade of relying on investment and exports for growth, China’s effort to rebalance its economy toward consumer-led growth is well underway and should continue to build steam in 2018.
Consumer spending and business fixed investment remained strong, pointing to continued domestic economic growth. Notably, business fixed investment growth, represented by private domestic investment, accelerated to 5.4% year-over-year growth in the fourth quarter of 2017, from a low of 0.71% in the third quarter of 2016.
Mid-sized advisor firms, upon graduating from being a one- or two-person operation, find themselves contending with all sorts of growing pains. All of a sudden they have the marketing issues of a larger firm – with an infrastructure that hasn’t caught up. Here’s my best advice to escape the trap of the mid-sized advisor firm.
You’ve no doubt heard that everything’s bigger in Texas. That’s more than just a trite expression, and I’m not just saying that because Texas is home to U.S. Global Investors.
Markets began the year as they had been over much of 2017, but changed their tone over the quarter—volatility reemerged, interest rates rose, the dollar fell, and equity markets retreated.
After being mostly absent in 2017, volatility has made a comeback. The S&P 500 Index closed down for the first three months of 2018—the first time it’s done so in 10 quarters. It also had its worst start to April since 1929. Gold performed as expected during the quarter, serving as a safe haven and delivering positive returns, while the price of oil surged more than 5 percent on U.S. dollar weakness and news that OPEC and Russia could be cooperating to limit output for a long period.
Many of us who grew up as children of children of the Great Depression may recall our parents imploring us to “Stop throwing good money after bad!” in any number of situations, even if we didn’t always heed their wisdom.
If you’re looking to grow by realigning your practice with your inner beliefs and passions, here are five reasons to move to a small or mid-sized broker dealer firm.
Quarterly commentary giving an overview of the markets and the importance of having and implementing a strategy when investing in the markets.
The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates the U.S. will become a net exporter of energy by as early as 2022, and the agency recently shared fresh data that supports the narrative that America is on the cusp of taking the throne as the world’s leading energy powerhouse.
Investors will soon begin to realise that the investment environment we are entering is entirely unsuitable for index-tracking strategies, and that they will begin to exit what they have all piled into in recent years.
The great fee debate continues. I’ve heard a new paradigm coming into the market: advisors who charge no commissions or tiered fees, just a flat, annual retainer. It’s a nice idea but in reality they’re trading one bias for another – and I’ll explain why.
The global expansion is either nearing its demand-driven peak or in the early stages of a supply-driven renaissance. We share our assessment and portfolio positioning.
