Guild’s Basic Needs Index

August 28, 2015

Why Are Global Markets So Interconnected? It’s because of the history of how markets and their participants have evolved. I entered the business as an analyst in 1968, after having been a part-time private investor from the late 1950s during my teenage years. My experience is that through the 1980s, stocks

Read More »

August 24, 2015

Running a Farm Like a Supply Chain We wrote last June about the arrival of big data in agriculture. In late 2013, the controversial agriculture giant, Monsanto, (NYSE: MON) bought a private company called the Climate Corporation, which had assembled a massive database — precisely mapping 25 million American fields

Read More »

August 14, 2015

Panic of the Day The media thinks it’s big news from China that the Yuan has fallen in U.S. Dollar terms by 4 percent as of this writing. Those who know the facts realize that this isn’t big news. The Chinese currency today sits 33 percent above where it was

Read More »

August 7, 2015

Not Your Grandfather’s Rate Hike With the Fed funds rate set to rise for the first time after years of extraordinary and unprecedented monetary policy, we believe that market psychology will make for a difficult investing environment.  This anxiety is compounded by the fact that these rate rises will not be,

Read More »

July 31, 2015

Herded Into Disaster: Yield Chasing, Liquidity, and ETFs In 2002, addressing Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman on his 90th birthday, former Fed chair Ben Bernanke acknowledged the role of the Federal Reserve in worsening the financial crisis of the Great Depression rather than helping it. He said, “You’re right, we

Read More »

July 24, 2015

“Winner Take All” in E-commerce… and Who’s Protected On June 11, the European Union opened a probe of e-book pricing by Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), continuing the rumbles that have surrounded allegedly anti-competitive practices by the online giant. Last year, AMZN and publisher Hachette squared off over similar issues, with prominent

Read More »

July 17, 2015

Chinese Market Swoon Puts the Western Press in Panic Mode The western press has been full of news about China’s 30 percent market fall and the Chinese government’s strong reaction to firm up share prices. China has seen several has 30 percent market declines before the current one. Some of

Read More »

July 10, 2015

Bond Liquidity Risks As we noted last week, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) published its annual report, in which it had some harsh words for the world’s financial authorities. Unless they start to normalize their policies, the BIS said, they may cause distortions in global financial markets that will

Read More »

July 03, 2015

Volatility Flash Points May Give Buying Opportunities Greece Greece is a country of about 11 million people and not really that significant in terms of its economic activity. Yet the shenanigans of the Greek politicians, the chronic tax avoidance by many Greek citizens, and the country’s habitual fiscal irresponsibility have

Read More »

June 26, 2015

Overview of Europe — Good News? The slow-moving train wreck that is Greece is moving along with new developments. The Greek banking system is experiencing a run, and accordingly the European Central Bank (ECB) is continuing to throw them a lifeline of emergency liquidity. Eurozone bankers are trying to keep

Read More »

June 19, 2015

Investment Summary World economic optimism is rising, and as a result, demand for government bonds is receding. Inflation is starting to be felt in some Asian countries, especially India. We note that new jobs and higher wages are a trend in the U.S., and we expect this trend to gain

Read More »

June 12, 2015

Why We Believe that U.S. Long-term Interest Rates May Rise this Year The Federal Reserve is likely to raise interest rates in September. However, whether it does or not, longer-term rates will rise over the next few months. The Fed does not have control over long-term rates; they have only

Read More »

June 08, 2015

Notable Trends in Global Markets Let’s look around the world at a few big trends. Trend number 1: inflation is coming back in the U.S. and in some countries where the currencies are falling — and this means interest rates, if not rising worldwide, will rise in the U.S. and

Read More »

June 05, 2015

Interest Rates At Guild Investment Management, we agree that the world is in a period of low global growth and prevalent deflationary influences. We are also in a period of banking restructuring, and as a result, we may see slower world growth for a few years. In spite of this

Read More »

May 29, 2015

Bitcoin: Disruptive, But Not Invulnerable Bitcoin is a “cryptocurrency” — a form of digital money that proponents hope will get all the middlemen out of financial transactions and permit the parties — even ones who do not know or trust one another — to conduct their exchange directly between themselves.

Read More »

May 26, 2015

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 »

We’ve moved!

Here you’ll find the historical archives of Guild’s Global Market Commentary, and our occasional public posts. To read all our content, please visit our Substack page to subscribe.