Sovereign Bond Buying by ECB No Longer Taboo Reuters reports that the governor of Belgium’s central bank and ECB council member Luc Coene has come out in support of full-fledged quantitative easing by the ECB in the form of sovereign bond purchases. Not surprisingly, he too is singing from the “deflation danger” hymn sheet: “The European…
In China the government has been trying to contain population growth for decades and certain parts of the population are only allowed to have 1 child. The government has become a lot more flexible in this regard, however, and many parents are allowed 2 children already. Another country that is growing like crazy is India….
Helmerich & Payne (HP) provides contract drilling services to primarily US based oil & gas producers. The company is a pioneer of horizontal drilling which has driven growth. Helmerich & Payne has seen revenue per share grow at over 13% a year over the last 10 years. In total, Helmerich & Payne has 302 land…
The Fed spiked the punchbowl instead of removing it and Wall Street roared ahead. It did this by not specifying more clearly when interest rates will start to rise. instead of promising to keep rates at zero “for a considerable time”, the US central bank said it “can be patient in beginning to normalize the…
It all looked so rosy just a few short hours ago. WTI crude has slipped from over $58.50 (once again testing that upper band of resistance) to back below $56 and down almost 2% from Friday’s close (not stabilizing). While the S&P and Dow (futures) remain green, the Nasdaq has tumbled into the red on the heels…
PHH Corp (PHH) provides outsourced solutions to financial institutions, real estate companies, credit unions, corporations and government agencies through its mortgage subsidiary. They are one of the top 10 originators of retail residential mortgages in the country. They also provide home financing directly to consumers. In July, they completed the sale of their fleet management…
Stocks appear on track to sustain the positive Fed-inspired momentum from last week, though volumes are expected to be relatively on the thin side in the next few sessions. On the data front, this holiday-shortened week’s docket is front-end loaded, with the final look at Q3 GDP, the November Durable Goods and Personal Income &…
While the U.S. economy is reveling in low oil and gas prices, Russia is breaking down. Over the last two weeks, it’s been playing military and economic shenanigans in a last-ditch effort to crawl out of the hole it largely dug for itself. But from what I’ve seen, Putin is an emotional and fickle leader,…
The headlines for existing home sales say that sales lost momentum – with sales declining year-over-year (seasonally adjusted data). Our analysis of the unadjusted data shows similar deceleration – but the unadjusted three month rolling averages for sales are positive this month after being in contraction all of 2014 and are accelerating. Bottom line – this…
As investors, we should never allow a year to pass by without extracting the important lessons from the critical movements of money that took place. A look back at 2014 holds great economic learning and offers key financial wisdom. It was a year of volatility and marked instability but also one of resiliency and measured…
