The capital markets are a highly complex system, where perturbations can cause a tidal change. Every business around the world has been affected by Covid-19. For a profitable business anywhere, this is a calamity. For a business that was losing money before this, it’s a tombstone.
COVID-19 has affected the data collection process for the major economic reports, including employment, consumer prices, retail sales, and industrial production. However, the incoming economic figures imply a stunningly swift, sharp decline in economic activity.
As headlines revolve around the impact of the coronavirus and the costs of government spending packages to keep the economy afloat, the state of Social Security is one thing we can find at least some assurance in, says Gail Buckner, our personal retirement and financial planning strategist.
Before the Coronavirus, the US economy was cruising for what looked like 3% annualized growth in real GDP in the first quarter. But the effects of both natural social distancing and government-mandated lockdowns crushed economic growth in March.
We need to fight the virus before we open the economy, according to Larry Summers.
Physical gold continued to catch a bid this week, trading above $1,760 an ounce, on a host of head-spinning economic news, from millions more Americans filing jobless claims to record money-printing to negative oil prices.
Today’s letter will be another hop-around review of the crisis landscape. I’ll touch on several topics instead of going deep into a single theme. So much is going on, it’s really hard to know where to start. There will be something to annoy everybody.
Two months into one of the most disruptive crises of our lifetimes, we have all become accustomed to words and phrases such as unprecedented, severe, social distancing, etc. Although these words are perhaps less jarring than they were prior to the onset of the coronavirus outbreak, they truly do capture the impact of this health crisis on the economy, now and in the years to come.
The health of our planet depends on responsible investing. On Earth Day and every day, it has our full support.
Disrupted by the global impact of COVID-19, a pause in “business as usual” is providing advisory firms with an opportunity to review their business development strategy and use of digital capabilities to personalize their service.
Amid the current crisis, a forceful economic policy response is essential. The central principle here is that the closer we can get economic support to the point where current spending enters the “circular flow” – basic incomes, net rent and lease obligations, utilities, contractual payments, even net interest payments, the better we can support the entire economy.
Stocks and earnings don’t always move in tandem; with stocks typically leading earnings … but is the market’s rally too much, too soon?
You have to love The Wall Street Journal writer, Jason Zweig. His extremely inciteful “Intelligent Investor” column could be called “Jason’s Wet Blanket,” because he seems to throw a wet blanket on most investment disciplines in U.S. stocks. This week’s wet blanket is designed to create even more desperation for value investors via his interview with Charlie Munger.
Economic data reports are generally backward-looking. There’s a lot of noise, reflecting statistical uncertainty and seasonal adjustment difficulties. Reports for March 2020 present a greater challenge.
What is the value of a financial advisor in 2020? We believe financial advisors have never been more valuable than they are right now. This annual Value of an Advisor study quantifies that dedication and the resulting benefit.
News is an interesting concept, in that information really only counts as news if it’s unexpected. On the flip side, information isn’t news if it is expected. April, however, is showing that even when the expectation is for bad news, the cumulative effect of so much negativity can still weigh on markets heavily. In other words, just expecting bad economic data does not necessarily make the market invulnerable to mountains of it.
Major economies are contracting, but extraordinary policy responses could limit severe recessions to this year.
Closed-end funds are currently trading at a discount as equity markets have dropped. Here’s where to spot opportunities.
The Fed’s $5 trillion bazooka, helicopter drops of cash, and a tripling of deficits over the next two years imply a future bout of high and volatile inflation unless fiscal policy nimbly pivots to help prevent the toxic side effect of a spike in inflation. Is that expectation realistic?
Read Howard Marks's latest memo, in which he discusses the notion of making informed guesses regarding the future and shares his questions about re-opening the U.S. economy and the latest Federal Reserve moves to help the economy combat the coronavirus.
While ESG was initially a hot topic for equity investors, fixed income market investors are quickly catching up. In this blog, we aim to share some key ESG integration trends we see among the fixed income market participants.
We favor U.S. stocks to their other developed market peers over the next six to 12 months. Why? The U.S. policy response to the coronavirus shock has been decisive and comprehensive, and has exceeded the scale of policy action in other major developed economies. We expect more to come.
Initial claims for unemployment benefits totaled 6.61 million in the week ending April 4, down from 6.87 million in the week before. Prior to seasonal adjustment, 15.1 million people have filed claims in the past three weeks – that’s 9.2% of the labor force – and the figures understate the degree of job losses (as not every laid-off worker can file a claim).
If you are hoping the “bear market” is over, and have jumped “back in” with all your capital, you are in “good company,” as many others, judging by my twitter feed, have done the same. Just be prepared to be disappointed in the months ahead.
While provisions about 529 plans within the SECURE Act are not lengthy, the implications and benefits are far-reaching, both for families saving for college and graduates with outstanding student loans.
Those whose work focuses on two other components of wellbeing – emotional and financial – are not risking their lives caring for their clients. Yet their worlds look very different today than they did a few weeks ago.
Dare to disagree with Paul Krugman? If you’re prominent enough to merit his attention, he will attack your ideas and worse, label you as evil. But behind his rhetoric is an economist who is often worth listening to.
Remaining on hold and waiting to see where life takes us over the next two to three months (or perhaps longer) is prudent. Patience will prove to be a virtue in these highly uncertain times.
Rick Rieder, Russ Brownback and Trevor Slaven contend that even as markets are gripped with the trauma of wild swings, and continued uncertainties, the seeds of future investment opportunity are being sown.
Economic activity descended in an elevator and will climb back up on the stairs.
Some 6.6 million additional workers filed for jobless claims this week, but it’s always darkest before the dawn. There’s ample reason to keep hope alive that conditions will be improving sooner than expected.
Scott explains how the extraordinary outbreak-fighting policy action – and recent market turbulence – has changed our view on credit.
When it comes to ESG, not all issues matter equally across industries. We believe our newly updated ESG scoring methodology best captures the issues that are truly material to companies.
Nikko Asset Management’s Global Investment Committee examines how the coronavirus pandemic has impacted global economies and where they’re finding overlooked and undervalued investment opportunities amid the volatility.
On January 1st, China informed the American government that a new pathogen, soon to be called the coronavirus, had been discovered in Wuhan, China. Its toxicity and infection rates were still unknown but soon proved to be far more virulent than many prior viruses.
The movement is based largely on the idea that you can live on less and save more through intensive financial planning, and an 11-year bull market made the possibility of hitting their numbers seem well within reach. That’s gone now.
What about all the other components of your referral network beyond clients and COIs? Don’t succumb to wearing referral blinders.
Contact your clients and prospects at a rate you have rarely done before. But you must use the right script.
With recent data showing a coronavirus-driven recession in the United States appears inevitable, the question for many investors is how long it will last. Sonal Desai, Chief Investment Officer, Franklin Templeton Fixed Income, weighs in on the differences between this one and other recessionary periods—and whether policymakers can engineer a recovery.
Like a pilot relying on a plane’s flight-control instruments during an unfamiliar route with poor visibility, we are depending more than ever on our fact-based, unemotional investment methods. The overwhelming majority of our investments are in companies that we believe are built to withstand harsh economic shocks. Only on the margin have we slightly increased our trading activity.
As an investment advisor, clients often ask my opinion about a private deal they’ve been offered. Here’s the general framework of how I assist the client in reviewing such investments.
Below is a letter we recently sent to clients about how we are responding to the recent market selloff.
A head-spinning 6.6 million Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits this week bringing the two-week total to 10 million. That’s more than the combined populations of Los Angeles and Chicago.
Just about every facet of life has changed due to the coronavirus pandemic. For many, this has involved adapting to working from home. We share our best practices and tips to help you maintain your productivity—and your sanity.
How should investors think about the economy and asset values when faced with unprecedented uncertainty surrounding the effects of the coronavirus and a complete absence of guidance from analogies to the past? Read Howard Marks’s latest memo, in which he lays out the views of both the optimist and the worrier.
Our baseline economic forecast is a U-shaped global recovery, but substantial unknowns remain.
Vanguard Group and Ant Financial’s joint venture is rolling out a new robo advisor to target the Chinese fintech giant’s 900 million users.
The star fund manager is famous for the power he wields in the market — and for making bets that other investors shy away from.
Like everywhere else, Europe needs liquidity. And the European Central Bank is delivering that in abundance. It appears to stand ready to do more without delay when markets become dysfunctional.
We at Research Affiliates recently conducted our first virtual All Hands meeting after finding ourselves working from home in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. As CIO, I responded to questions about our investment strategy. Katy Sherrerd, CEO, and Jeff Wilson, Head of Distribution, asked me to elaborate more broadly on my response to one of the questions submitted by email the day prior.
