Executive Summary 1. The Trump administration deepens its drive for transparent healthcare pricing. In February, the Trump administration asked for comments on a proposed rule with potentially vast effects on the entire U.S. healthcare sector. A rule that came into effect in January already required hospitals to make their list Read more
Last year, MSCI — the company that constructs the indexes underlying many major ETFs and benchmarks — began to incorporate some domestically traded Chinese stocks into those indexes. These stocks, called “A shares” to distinguish them from other classes of Chinese shares that trade on exchanges outside the mainland, had Read more
Several base metals have rallied strongly in 2019: as of this writing, copper, nickel, and zinc are all up more than 10%. Copper — the “red metal” — is often referred to as “Dr Copper” because of its alleged status as a leading economic indicator. It is the leading industrial Read more
Market Summary for Week of February 22, 2019 This week we are keeping it short. We remain bullish on the U.S., and on several foreign markets. The U.S. market is still a buy, in our opinion. Breakouts of the type we have recently seen offer opportunity for higher U.S. stock Read more
Getting Bullish on China After a dismal 2018, the Chinese stock market has been one of the world’s better performers in 2019, with the MSCI China index up almost 13% as of this writing. Source: Bloomberg LLP As we have noted in several recent letters, the poor performance of the Read more
The U.S. Economy and Markets In spite of slight deceleration from the GDP growth rate posted in 2018, the U.S. economy continues to be strong, and we anticipate that as 2019 unfolds, growth will strengthen. U.S. markets have rapidly recovered from their fourth-quarter swoon, and while we believe that Read more
Morgan Stanley [NYSE: MS] is acquiring a Canadian firm, Solium Capital, which manages stock-compensation plans for about 3,000 companies. Collectively, Solium’s clients have a million employees — disproportionately young, and disproportionately employed in high-tech, high-growth startup companies (including, for example, Nextdoor, Sonos, Dropbox, Stripe, and Instacart). This acquisition makes sense Read more
Brazil’s 81-seat senate just elected a new leader. (The “president of the senate” is third in line to Brazil’s presidency.) It was not the old leader, who had served four two-year terms in the role: a well-known deal-maker who, like many establishment politicians in Brazil, is facing allegations of corruption. Read more
Some GDP Deceleration, But U.S. Corporates and Consumers Are Still In Good Health The partial government shutdown in early 2019 has delayed the Commerce Department’s official report on fourth-quarter U.S. GDP growth until February 28. In the absence of official data, polls of economists are providing some picture: about 2.6% annualized Read more
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