If you didn’t catch the article in yesterday’s Washington Post, you can find it here. It’s worth reading. I understand that lending standards became too restrictive after the housing crash and we need to find an appropriate middle ground but come on… Encouraging profit-driven lenders “to use more subjective judgment” is just asking for trouble.…
Q1 Update
Now that the first quarter of 2013 has come to a close, let’s take a look at capital flows. The first chart below shows stocks (S&P 500) against bonds (10 year Treasury). Typically, money moves back and forth between stocks and bonds as investors are either comfortable with taking risk or feel risk adverse. Since…
Market Update: High Yields & The Disaster Formerly Known As Europe
I haven’t written in a few weeks now (partially because I’m a March Madness fanatic) so today’s post will cover two items that are on my mind this week. Leveraged Loans The leveraged loan market is all the craze, as covered in the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times earlier this month. For those unfamiliar,…
Exhibit A…
From the front page of CNBC this morning: Click here I love her movies but excuse me for not taking investment advice from her… This bull market could very well continue for some time but it’s usually not a good sign when inexperienced people (her words, not mine) start jumping into the game. Nick
Mr. Bernanke & The Fed
Let’s take a look at the stock market since the Fed ended Operation Twist at the end of 2012 (where they were alternating short-dated bond sales and long-dated bond purchases every few days), and transitioned solely to purchases of bonds (in the amount of $85 billion per month). S&P 500 ETF (SPY ) – 9…
Sequestration and Economic Outlook
A client asked my thoughts on Sequestration and what I’m thinking/doing in both the short and long-term to prepare portfolios, so I figured I should throw my thoughts out there before tomorrow in case anyone else is wondering. Sequestration If it actually occurs, I’m actually a lot less concerned about the long-term investment implications now…
Sunspots & Food
Earlier this week, NASA observed a massive sunspot grow to 6 times the diameter of the Earth! Why should anyone other than space-loving nerds care? Because these are directly linked to solar flares which affect our atmosphere and climate. If you missed my earlier post on Sunspots and their 11 year cycle, you can check…
Update: Currency Wars
Yesterday, PIMCO’s CEO and co-CIO, Mohamed El-Erian, wrote an article on CNBC about the confusion surrounding comments from the recent meeting of the G-7 (the G-7 is a group of finance ministers from 7 of the largest industrialized nations, economically: the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, and Japan). To sum things up, the G-7…