Guild’s Basic Needs Index
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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%
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
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
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,
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
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
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
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
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,
