Many global investors limited to investment grade markets or developed markets, as defined by MSCI have no direct exposure to Greece. Nevertheless, recent developments in Greece are worrisome to investors. Many fear that the political challenges in Greece could lead to its ultimate exit from the monetary union and default. This concern has led…
Source: flickr Dear Diary, It’s cold here in Manhattan. We’ve never lived in New York. And every previous visit had left us unenthusiastic. The city is not pretty… at least not compared to Paris. And Lower Manhattan always seemed gritty, dirty and unkempt. Like a homely man or a homeless woman. But a lot has changed….
(Photo Credit: Scott Ableman) Tuesday – AutoZone Auto parts retailer AutoZone (AZO) is set to report Tuesday before the opening bell. Last quarter AutoZone reported an 8% gain in year over year (yoy) earnings per share and a minor drop in total revenue. Earnings at AutoZone have been growing by a yoy average of 16% each…
Since 2010, our top scoring weekly has outpaced the SPX by a median 376 bps in the following year. The best performers from our list one year ago are RCL up 82%, DAL up 66%, GD up 64%, MU up 58%, and INTC up 57%. The best scoring large cap sector is healthcare The top…
This Great Graphic was tweeted by Michael McDonough, the global head of economics for Bloomberg and its chief economist. It shows in one chart the assets of the central banks of many countries, including China (green line). Does the expansion of a central bank’s balance sheet let us forecast currency movement? It is not immediately clear. It depends…
Last week’s surprisingly strong gain in November payrolls may be a sign that the US economy is improving, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at the Treasury market. Or would you? Actually, much depends on which portion of the yield curve you’re gazing at. The 2-year yield has popped higher since Friday’s bullish payrolls data, which…
Well that didn’t take long, did it? Our Nikkei and EWJ short positions continue to rake in the cash as that index drops another 122 points overnight but, more to the point, we nailed the switch to the fresh horse of China for our readers, as FXI topped out right at our $42 target, almost to…
Here is the state of the US Yield Curve during a pre-open with deflation in the air and global markets upset. The curve is rising this morning as yields drop. It’s obviously a risk ‘OFF’ picture. They couldn’t wait to fly out of short-term Treasuries (risk ‘ON’) on Friday’s ‘Jobs’ hype and today they are…
BlackRock (BLK) is the largest asset manager in the world, with $4.525 trillion in total assets under management AUM and clients in more than 100 countries. The AUM generates Fee Revenues of around $5.5 billion a year. Product diversity and a heavier concentration in the institutional channel have traditionally provided BlackRock with a much “stickier”…
This post contains Part 2 of my 3-part Economic Outlook for 2015 (read part 1 here). In this article we’ll examine The Conference Board’s 4 Coincident Economic Indicators, which measure the strength of current economic activity. My rankings for each indicator are shown below (-1, 0 or +1), along with the equally-weighted and Conference Board-weighted scores of +50%…
