China Stocks Deserve A Look There were no fireworks at last week’s China summit of the finance ministers and central bankers of the world’s 20 biggest economies; it was a tame and mostly uneventful affair. Most significantly, China assured the participants that their economic growth strategy doesn’t hinge on Read more…
Retirement: An Economic Disaster and a Health Catastrophe? A letter to Financial Times columnist Michael Skapinker last week brought our attention to a personality we hadn’t heard of, but who is well-known in Europe. Dr. Charles Eugster is a 96-year-old British resident of Switzerland who took Skapinker to task for Read more…
Market Summary Some market sectors have become very good values. Others need to fall more in price to become attractive. Seeing the outsized declines in energy, technology, and other sectors has made us quite certain that some values have been attained in certain sectors. We are focused on technology, social Read more…
Europe’s Banks Are Showing Cracks We’ve been expressing our worry about the health of the European banking system for years. Starting in 2012, many European banks relied on “CoCos” — contingent convertible bonds — in an attempt to shore up their balance sheets. Now, as market fear begins to price Read more…
Market Summary World markets remain in a period of correction. Accordingly, we are cautious and awaiting lower prices before investing the large amount of cash in client accounts. Many now believe that the U.S. will go into a recession in 2016. We do not see that occurring; the U.S. Read more…
Market Summary The U.S. is currently in a market correction. What should we do during this correction? Does the correction signal that a recession is in store for 2016? There is no doubt that the U.S. market has followed most other world markets into a correction phase. As of Read more…
How Fast Will the Fed Raise Rates? The “dot plot” of the Federal Reserve shows how the opinions of various FOMC participants stack up, and is published after each meeting. December’s dot plot suggests that the majority is anticipating four rate increases in 2016, ending the year with the Fed Read more…
China: Investor Confusion Leading to Volatility According to Jonathan Anderson of Emerging Advisors Group (EM Advisor Group), who is our favorite China economic analyst, his “base case” for China has shifted. Regular readers know that we have followed Mr. Anderson for many years, and that in our view he has Read more…
2016 Outlook As regular readers know, we view the U.S. Dollar as the key to the outlook for stocks in 2016. (In the summary section above, we explain why a strong U.S. Dollar has gone from being a positive for the market in years past, to being a negative for Read more…
Best of Breed in 2016 In the era of plentiful liquidity that accompanied QE and six-plus years of near-zero interest rates, the rising tide lifted many boats that really didn’t deserve to get lifted. U.S. markets are now slightly over-valued, and have a number of psychological and macroeconomic headwinds. We Read more…
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