The Fiduciary Standard Is Coming To Your Brokerage Since 1974, consumer protection for retirement savings products has been overseen not by financial regulators, as one might expect, but by the Department of Labor, under ERISA (the Employee Retirement Income Security Act). Major new changes to this law are about to 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
Tactical Views on the Year’s End and Beyond With just a little more than a month remaining to year’s end, we’re reflecting on the market’s performance thus far as we strategize the final push and begin to think about how to plan for 2016. Two themes stand out for us: Read more
Real Estate: The Lay of the Land Stocks and real estate both suffered sharp declines during the Great Recession, and both have recovered in the more-than-six years since the downturn officially ended. Data Source: NCREIF, Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, Bloomberg The graph above shows the relative performance of Read more
The Case for GoldRecently we have been hearing from some of our old friends from the gold world. Except for the occasional trading position, we have not been positive on gold for about four years. Our attitude has recently changed. A few weeks ago, and last week as well, we Read more
Gold — An Unloved Asset That’s On Our Radar Gold is not getting much press, having held its own since its decline in the first half of 2013. We believe that there are reasons for intelligent investors to continue to hold gold in their portfolios. Emerging market countries, especially China, Read more
Standards Ease for Home LoansStill Tough For Homebuilders, But Looking Better for Suppliers Even though it was exotic financial instruments and an over-leveraged system that brought on the financial crisis in 2007 and 2008, the first shot fired was the collapse of the sub-prime lending market. Readers will remember the slack lending 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
Yieldcos: Spinoffs Seek Tax and Other Advantages for Renewable Projects Government support is providing powerful tailwinds for renewable energy projects. Despite some public relations problems, the Obama administration’s clear policies still favor renewables over any type of hydro-carbons — even domestically produced oil and gas. Until recently, investors wishing to invest Read more
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