Guild’s Basic Needs Index

December 18, 2015

100 Million Times Faster?  Quantum Computing Is In the House    Last Tuesday, the Google Research Blog announced the publication of a new paper by Alphabet’s (NASDAQ:  GOOG) Quantum AI team, reporting on the results of experiments run on the quantum computer system that GOOG operates jointly with NASA.  That

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December 11, 2015

Market Summary As we survey the investment horizon for 2016 the picture that we see is not highly attractive. Economic and Financial Fundamentals: Slightly Positive On a fundamental basis, the world is growing at a modest rate, and the return to a big deflationary trend in North America, Europe, or

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December 04, 2015

Sunnis, Shi’ites, and Surprises  After almost five years of civil war, the conflict in Syria has spilled over to Europe in the form of an ongoing refugee crisis, and now through the terrorist attacks in Paris — which, according to Islamic State claims, came as retaliation for French airstrikes.  Now,

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November 27, 2015

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:

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November 20, 2015

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

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November 13, 2015

Some good news for small banks.  Financials are some of the first beneficiaries in investors’ minds as they contemplate the imminent end of the Fed’s zero-interest-rate policy, but not all financials are created equal.  We believe that the largest financial institutions will continue to face intense regulatory scrutiny and that

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November 09, 2015

It May Not Be a “Sharing Economy,” But It’s Still Transformative We read recently about a new startup in the “sharing economy,” a French company called “BlaBlaCar” — an improvement on its original name that would make sense only to French speakers, “Covoitourage.” The shift is appropriate, since the ride-sharing

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November 02, 2015

More Light in Dark PoolsDark pools are private trading venues, off the main exchanges, mostly run by large brokerage houses (although some are independent). On public exchanges such as the New York Stock Exchange or the NASDAQ, bids and offers are public. In dark pools, however, details of bids and

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October 23, 2015

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

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October 16, 2015

Market Summary The U.S. market is moving ahead — as long as the U.S. Dollar stays in a sideways or declining trend. We’re bullish on U.S. stocks, but very selective about which sectors to be involved in. In our view, a normal seasonal stock market rally should ensue now that

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October 10, 2015

Creative Destruction: Is This Time Different? Many readers are probably familiar with the term “creative destruction.” It was coined by early 20th-century economist Joseph Schumpeter, who used it to describe how capitalism creates growth and technological progress by ruthlessly eliminating ideas, companies, and industries that no longer serve our best interests and no

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October 09, 2015

What Is Going On With the U.S. and World Economy? There are times when things with which I am very familiar are reported in the financial media with 80% accuracy. And there are other times when things with which I am very familiar are reported in the financial media with 20%

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September 25, 2015

Global Winners and Losers in the Oil Shakeout Oil analysts were mostly caught flat-footed by the price decline that began to unfold in June of last year, which has become one of six such drops of greater than 30 percent over the past three decades. Oil price forecasting techniques range from

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September 21, 2015

Market Summary We believe that although a full or partial retest of recent lows may occur, the correction’s worst is over, and if the past is a guide, U.S. stocks will appreciate over the next six-month time-frame, volatility will be with us as the market retests its bottom and then

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September 11, 2015

The End Is Not Nigh The driver of real American exceptionalism is the open, experimental, experiential, non-judgmental, data-driven approach that academic and entrepreneur Sebastian Thrun appreciates so much about Silicon Valley culture. Thrun, who was a tenured robotics and artificial intelligence professor at Stanford, as well as a Google Fellow,

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September 04, 2015

China Is Not Crashing Panic over Chinese stock markets and the Chinese economy is irrational. There has been no historical correlation between the Chinese stock market and the Chinese economy, and there is no indication that the Chinese economy is crashing. In China, we see a maturing economy navigating a

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