Guild’s Basic Needs Index
April 01, 2016
When Too Much News Can Confuse 1. GDP grew by 2.4 percent in 2015 — ignore flawed data, including GDPNow. Fourth-quarter 2015 GDP growth for the U.S. was just revised up to 1.4 percent annualized from an initial reading of 0.7 percent. That brings growth for the year as a
March 31, 2016
Monty was recently interviewed by Ben Bartenstein from Bloomberg. To read “The Investor Who’s Betting on Brazil’s Corruption Scandal”, please click the following link: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-31/brazil-s-watergate-has-veteran-stock-picker-betting-on-big-rally
March 24, 2016
Economic Momentum Will Support Housing in 2016 Between its peak in July, 2006, and its bottom in March, 2012, the Case-Shiller home price index, which aggregates data from 20 metropolitan areas in the U.S., registered a drop of more than 27 percent. Since that bottom, the index has registered a
March 19, 2016
Guild Investment Management was recently quoted by Dimitra Defotis from Barron’s. To read “Brazil’s Rising Stocks Defy Political, Economic Reality”, please click the following link: http://www.barrons.com/articles/brazils-rising-stocks-defy-political-economic-reality-1458363178
March 18, 2016
Brazil’s “Watergate Moment” May Be Nigh Last weekend saw another set of massive demonstrations against Brazil’s hugely unpopular President, Dilma Rousseff. She has had the misfortune to preside over a severe economic downturn, but she can only partly blame global economic forces beyond her control. A great deal of the
March 18, 2016
Guild Investment Management was recently quoted by Teresa Rivas from Barron’s. To read “Gold Rally Should Continue: Guild Investment”, please click the following link: http://blogs.barrons.com/focusonfunds/2016/03/18/gold-rally-should-continue-guild-investment/
March 11, 2016
No, Chicken Little, the sky ain’t falling Data continue to come in showing that fears of a U.S. recession are groundless — good GDP growth, good job growth, continued improvement in labor force participation, improvement in “underemployment” (when workers want full-time work and can’t find it), and the increasing signs
March 04, 2016
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
February 26, 2016
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
February 19, 2016
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
February 11, 2016
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
February 05, 2016
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.
January 28, 2016
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
January 22, 2016
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
January 15, 2016
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
January 08, 2016
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
