Will We Get an April-to-October Market Correction in 2014? We anticipate that the U.S. and European markets will rally this year, and close 2014 with good gains. However, the crisis in Ukraine and fears (probably misplaced) about China melting down are creating a crisis of confidence in the European and emerging Read more…
Regulatory Burden, Productivity Growth, and Jobs At the Davos meeting of the World Economic Forum, economists and market participants are surveyed, among other things, about the regulatory burdens faced in their countries. The results of this year’s survey, like those of the last few years, were not encouraging for the United States. Read more…
Two Key Themes That Are Not Widely Known —But Which Will Affect You and Your Life Substantially Key Theme #1: The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is going to change healthcare delivery in the U.S. in many ways… thus far, our research indicates that most of these changes are bad for the Read more…
Internet Investment in China Attracts Scrutiny from Central Bank A tiny slice of China’s savings are beginning to flow into new online investment vehicles run by Chinese internet giants such as Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu. Chinese regulators are now looking at the phenomenon — and so are China’s big commercial banks, who Read more…
A Note on Solar Energy Economics We recently read a piece of analysis on solar power generation that we thought was worth passing on to our readers. Even though the naïve and unreasonable pursuit of renewables can put a whole economy in the soup, as we noted above, governments are very likely Read more…
Coals to Newcastle, Gas to the Gulf U.S. Shale Continues to Reshape Global Energy Markets and Alliances Last year, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) awarded a contract for the construction of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) import terminal. Yes, you read that correctly, as counter-intuitive as it may seem, the UAE Read more…
Investment Summary U.S. stock market earnings and growth prospects remain positive. The U.S. market is having a normal correction, and we will use this opportunity to spend some of the cash we have raised to buy stocks at a discount. The U.S. trailing P/E as of December 31, 2013 was about 16 Read more…
Investment Summary The four emerging trends mentioned above are all significant parts of understanding the investment picture for 2014 and for the remainder of the decade. Trend #1: With large banks curtailing commodity trading businesses, there should be less risk of instability in commodity markets. The U.S. banking system could actually be Read more…
The “Internet of Things” for Consumers — Almost Here, or Still Too Soon? The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas is an annual Mecca for trend-seekers in tech. This year, one of the central themes of the show is one that we have touched on before in this letter — Read more…
The Bullish Case for 2014: Productivity Growth is the Key We are looking forward to 2014 with optimism, and we believe the key factor supporting the U.S. and global economies in the present phase of the economic cycle will be productivity growth. Our comments below were prompted by a similar analysis recently Read more…
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