Monthly Archives: July 2015

UTX Beats Q2 Earnings, Outlook Trimmed

United Technologies Corporation (UTX – Analyst Report) reported second quarter 2015 net income of $1,542 million or $1.73 per share, down from $1,680 million or $1.84 in the year-ago quarter. The decrease in earnings was driven by a decline in revenues. Excluding one-time items, recurring earnings for the quarter were $1.81 per share, down 2% year over year,…

Jason Zweig Is Wrong About Gold

Jason Zweig’s latest post is titled Let’s Be Honest About Gold: It’s A Pet Rock and attempts to debunk most of the reasons people own gold but oddly skips over the one I believe to be most important and is still wholly intact. First up is criticism that gold has not been able to go up in…

Is This Why The Dollar Is Sliding?

Stocks, bond yields, and the Dollar suddenly started dropping right as The Fed unveiled its revisions for industrial production and capacity utilization.   Already at weak levels, both were revised notably lower, slowing the market’s rate-hike expectations and stalling any hope that the recovery is gathering pace. Judging by the chart below, the June payrolls report was…

Cheap Funds Dupe Investors – 3Q15

Fund holdings affect fund performance more than fees or past performance. A cheap fund is not necessarily a good fund. A fund that has done well in the past is not likely to do well in the future (e.g. 5-star kiss of death and active management has long history of underperformance). Yet, traditional fund research focuses only…

Semi’s Updated

As we await the Semiconductor Equipment sector’s Book-to-Bill data for June, we observe that Semiconductor sector leadership (SOX-SPX) is still intact in the US stock market.   This sector is noteworthy because it was a real indicator in early 2013 of the general strength to come in manufacturing (Semi Equipment cycles often do that) and…

Dollar Supported By Fed Rate Outlook

Investors’ speculation is growing once again, with expectations high that the United States Federal Reserve Bank is moving closer to hiking interest rates. James Bullard, the president of the St. Louis branch of the Fed, said yesterday that the Fed might even consider a September rate increase. That helped to push the US Dollar broadly…

Dollar Supported By Fed Rate Outlook

Investors’ speculation is growing once again, with expectations high that the United States Federal Reserve Bank is moving closer to hiking interest rates. James Bullard, the president of the St. Louis branch of the Fed, said yesterday that the Fed might even consider a September rate increase. That helped to push the US Dollar broadly…