Last month lived up to October’s traditional reputation as a difficult one for global stock markets. As political pundits discussed an “October surprise” in the context of the U.S. presidential election, investors were busily reacting to a series of developments that ultimately depressed returns. Stocks were pushed down in part by better-than-expected economic data, which investors viewed as raising the odds the Federal Reserve will increase interest rates in December.
There are a variety of economic models that are supposed to predict the probabilities of recession.
When looking at various countries or regions where we invest, we consider emerging markets as representing a disproportionate amount of where equity value exists today after several years of underperformance relative to developed markets.
Regular readers are aware of our research showing that the Knowledge Effect is really a “super factor”.
When the presidential election is over, investors can focus on what is going on in the world economy and what future investment opportunities are lurking out there.
Many shrewd investors who were nervous about overvalued shares had lost out before by selling too early and were coming back into the market.
This piece brings together all the Private Wealth Management research teams on a topic of common interest and current importance.
It is relatively common knowledge that when interest rates decline stocks ought to rise, and they typically do.
Has the institution of the Nobel Prize in economics been a cause of the global economic woes of the last 20 years – its financial crises, its economic slowdowns and its increasing intra-national inequalities? In their recent book, The Nobel Factor: The Prize in Economics, Social Democracy, and the Market Turn, authors Avner Offer and Gabriel Söderberg make a good, if somewhat haphazard, case that it has.
Smart beta. Empirical finance. Evidence-based investing. These terms, which were in the periphery of the investment vernacular just 10 years ago, have become the investment world’s most popular memes today. Why?
Low-vol strategies have attracted a lot of attention, in part because they portend to offer investors a free lunch – higher returns with lower volatility. But they carry hidden risks that every investor must understand.
As of October 27, stocks are up more than 6 percent year-to-date. Although slightly below the average, this is much higher than returns in the last two election cycles when a new president had to be selected: In 2008, the market plunged nearly 40 percent; in 2000, it ended down 9 percent.
Mary Ellen Stanek Addresses Baird Advisors Institutional Investors Conference.
Understanding asset class correlation patterns is key to understanding true portfolio risk factor exposures and the embedded assumptions that inform investment decisions.
The burning question for equity investors is: what will happen to earnings in 2017?
We recently had the pleasure of interviewing Frank Holmes, CEO and Chief Investment Officer at U.S. Global Investors. He talks about a seasonal norm he sees playing out in the gold market over the next few months...
It was an interesting quarter in the fixed income markets and the municipal markets in particular, ranging from "Brexit" in the United Kingdom to the Federal Reserve Board (Fed) threatening to raise the Fed funds rate yet again (sounding like "Chicken Little").
The post-election outlook has investors questioning the state of the global economy, volatility, corporate earnings, and the direction of interest rates.
Given the heightened interest in dividend strategies, I’ll take a look at how some of the leading providers of actively managed dividend-based strategies have performed.
Today we’ll look at the remarkable results the Cleveland Clinic has already achieved with its 100,000+ employees and dependents and with numerous corporations they work with. They are making people healthier and reducing medical costs. It is a model that I think could work on a much broader scale.
In order to make sense of what is taking place in our economy, capital markets and even our society, we are working within a paradigm in which we assume that our form of democracy and capitalism is changing at a more rapid pace than before.
Investors first fell in love with American small cap stocks in the late 1970s when small companies became recognized as more nimble, fast growing, and more able to adapt to changes to technology than their bloated, plodding large competitors.
Amid a most astounding presidential campaign season, tax policy has gone virtually unnoticed. Kristina Hooper, US Investment Strategist at Allianz Global Investors, looks past the rhetoric to shed light on the candidates’ tax proposals and what a Clinton or Trump victory could mean for the US economy.
The analogy between the stock market and poker has always been irresistible. Interestingly, the stock market increasingly resembles a low-stakes recreational game among friends and less the sort of ‘there goes the ranch’ game favored by cutthroat professionals.
We have normal week for economic data, and a big week for earnings reports. The last Presidential debate will grab headlines. We have been monitoring these factors for weeks, but something new is showing up in the data.
This week we are going to look at the US healthcare system, not simply to critique Obamacare, but to explore the deeper problems. Warning: this letter will print much longer as the latter half of the letter has a lot of charts and graphs.
We are now seven years into both an economic recovery and a bull market. Because the 2008 Great Financial Crisis and the subsequent economic recovery were unlike any other since the Great Depression, it makes sense to look back and see from whence we came and to look forward and try to see whether current trends can be sustained.
Weakening productivity growth poses serious risks to the economy and, by association, to stocks. One key piece to the puzzle is that productivity growth requires not just technological change, but also the diffusion of that change across the economy.
In the past couple of days, three different people have forwarded me an opinion piece that attempts to draw some parallels between the way the market acted in October 1987 and the way it’s acting now.
As a young stockbroker in the 1980’s, I was hungry for disciplines which could help me make money for clients. One of the most sensible things I came across was a theory by an investor that we refer to as the 70-20-10 rule.
For the second time in as many debates, the US presidential candidates failed to talk about fiscal spending. Much too important to go unmentioned, Kristina Hooper, US Investment Strategist at Allianz Global Investors, presents each candidate’s fiscal platform and the potential implications for the US economy.
The ability to filter through hundreds of gold stocks, choosing those with the best relative value, among other things, is a skill that our portfolio management team at U.S. Global Investors has over 30 years of experience in.
With all of the talk of the Federal Reserve taking action and raising rates in the next couple months, investors naturally are considering how they position their portfolios.
Economic data released in the next two weeks will shed light on the state of the housing market as the third quarter of 2016 ended and the fourth quarter began,
Gold and silver prices charged higher during the first 6 months of the year. They fell into a rut over the summer, and then hit the skids last Tuesday.
Chairman Chuck Royce and Co-CIO Francis Gannon look at broadening small-cap strength in the volatile third quarter, discuss why value should continue to lead in the current cycle, and explain where they are finding opportunities.
When comparing strategies for coordinating home equity with portfolio distributions to generate retirement income, the tenure option fairs well. As a way to fund retirement efficiency improvements, using the tenure payment option from the line of credit as an alternative to purchasing a SPIA or DIA is worth exploring further.
We really do not have health care as much as sick care since the focus is on treatment versus prevention. But our sick care is in serious condition. For those individuals who do not have employer coverage – which is not a small number – its condition is critical. While I am steadfast in my thoughts on how a healthcare system could be designed and work for everyone, the current condition of our sick care is making me sick.
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.
When equity investors chase what’s hot, it often ends in tears. Today, the safety trades that have been so popular earlier this year are actually looking quite dangerous.
Global political uncertainly has been plaguing investors around the world for months. With the UK Brexit vote behind us, attention now turns to the US presidential election.
Tomorrow, the Labor Department releases the jobs report—probably the most important economic report of them all. After all, jobs drive everything.
With all that is happening in the world – the U.S. election, the Brexit vote, various terrorist incidents, speculation about will she or won’t she raise rates at the Fed and other concerns – oil seems to have been pushed down the priority scale of market-influencing issues.
With the US presidential election about five weeks away, the popular press has feasted on the campaign events and survey results, with the primary focus on the Trump spectacle. The fundamental question remains: How did The Don succeed in winning the Republican Party nomination in the first place? And how could he remain in contention in the wake of his bizarre campaign rhetoric? A provocative new report from Sentier Research gives us insight into what might be the key factor in the Trump phenomenon: A secular decline in the financial well-being of white working class males and what we can infer as the resulting anger directed at the political powers that be.
It was a profitable period for well-diversified multi-asset strategic investors in global equity markets.
2016 is a year no one will soon forget. It was the worst start to a year ever for the S&P 500 after 28 trading days (down 10.5%), only to bounce back and actually finish positive by the end of the first quarter.
Investors place far too much emphasis on the GDP figures. However, digging into the components suggests a less optimistic (not pessimistic) outlook for growth in the near term.
My coaching clients tell me they are losing wealthy clients to robo-advisors. They want advice on how to better articulate their value proposition.
