February 16, 2015

The Currency War Is On — What Does It Mean For Your Portfolio? Many world currencies are being devalued, and it is the beginning of a potential currency war. This, more than any other current or historical event, gives us a direction for the future of investing and shows us Read more…

January 05, 2015

Executive Summary 1. There are attractive investment opportunities in 2015, but we expect more volatility. As we’ve said over the past several weeks, we see good momentum in economic fundamentals supporting corporate profit growth and stock price appreciation in 2015, especially in the U.S., and potentially in some other global Read more…

August 28, 2014

China Deepens Reform and Privatization of State-Owned Enterprises We wrote a few weeks ago that events in China show Xi Jinping decisively consolidating his power — specifically, the downfall of Zhu Yongkang, a former member of the Politburo Standing Committee and the most powerful politician to be investigated for corruption in the Read more…

August 15, 2014

New BRICS Institutions Highlight the Changing Global Financial Order Leaders of the BRICS nations — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — have taken a decisive step to increase their clout in global finance and reduce their dependence on financial institutions dominated by Europe and the United States. For now, this Read more…

June 19, 2014

Asian Firms Preparing to Take the World Stage The development of Asian capitalism over the past several decades has been robust. According to data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the proportion of world GDP generated by the advanced G7 economies peaked in 1988 at 69 percent. In that year, developing Asian Read more…

April 16, 2014

U.S. Hegemony, Global Flashpoints, and Military Spending In February, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel delivered the Obama administration’s proposed 2015 defense budget. It was notable for the reduction of the U.S. Army to its lowest force level since World War II. It envisions “a military capable of defeating any adversary, but too small Read more…

April 03, 2014

China Eases — One More Step in the Dance Chinese premier Li Keqiang gave a speech to provincial officials last week which indicated that the arrival of some form of stimulus to the Chinese economy is imminent. We continue to hold our core China thesis, that a national financial crisis and Read more…

February 20, 2014

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…

January 23, 2014

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…

January 02, 2014

Our Outlook for 2014 in Brief North America U.S.: As we have been saying, the economy in the U.S. will grow in 2014 by a surprising amount. Corporate spending is rising and employment will follow. We anticipate U.S. GDP growth real growth of 3.5 percent and inflation of 1.2 percent, for total Read more…