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Top scoring weekly returns:  Buy and Hold 1 Year The top scoring sector across our 1,600 stock universe is utilities. Financials, healthcare, services, consumer goods, and technology score above average. Industrial goods score in line. Basics score below average. Large cap managers should concentrate on healthcare, financials, and services. Across mid cap, focus on utilities,…

Bear Of Day: Francesca’s

Francesca’s Holdings Corporation (FRAN – Snapshot Report) has a new CEO but comparable-store-sales continue to slide. Can this Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell) retailer turn it around? Francesca’s Holdings is a specialty woman’s retailer, operating 538 boutiques in 47 states and the District of Columbia carrying apparel, shoes, jewelry and accessories. It also operates an ecommerce site on…

How To Stay Warm In Philadelphia – Burn Dollar Bills

Apparently taking a page out of China’s book, Factually reports the Philadelphia Federal Reserve office (apparently aware of the worthlessness of their fiat currency) sends old currency to local power plants, where it’s burned for electricity. As WSJ reports, The Fed destroys more than 5,000 tons of U.S. currency a year – most of it once went to landfills, but…

Spain To Issue €55 Billion In New Debt, 72% To Roll Over Existing...

Spain’s regional and local governments are struggling to pay back debts. The central government has not made much progress either.  El Economista reports 72% of Treasury Issuance in 2015 to Refinance CCAA and Municipalities.  Of estimated €55 billion debt increase for 2015, 72 percent of that amount will be to regional governments and municipalities through new…

The Burning Questions For 2015

Louis Gave is one of my favorite investment and economic thinkers, besides being a good friend and an all-around fun guy. When he and his father Charles and the well-known European journalist Anatole Kaletsky decided to form Gavekal some 15 years ago, Louis moved to Hong Kong, as they felt that Asia and especially China…

The Burning Questions For 2015

Louis Gave is one of my favorite investment and economic thinkers, besides being a good friend and an all-around fun guy. When he and his father Charles and the well-known European journalist Anatole Kaletsky decided to form Gavekal some 15 years ago, Louis moved to Hong Kong, as they felt that Asia and especially China…

Forex Forecast: Quant Vs Chart Reading

Quantitative Forecast Academic studies have shown that the most reliable way to determine future price movements from past price movements, is by use of momentum. In the Forex market, a momentum study is best applied to the four major Forex currency pairs by simply checking whether the weekly close is above or below the weekly…

EC Supply, Dem

A few weeks ago I offered some calculations suggesting that lower demand for oil might account for about $20/barrel of the dramatic decline in the price of oil since last summer. Here I point to some other evidence consistent with that conclusion. Last week the IMF’s Rabah Arezki and Olivier Blanchard produced a very useful assessment of…