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Archives for October 2016

Worthy Reads: Some Big Cities See Rents Fall for First Time in Years

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Oil Extends Gains After U.S. Inventory Data (WSJ) Some Big Cities See Rents Fall for First Time in Years (WSJ) The Glow of QE Is Fading and Some Major Central Banks Want a Way Out (Bloomberg) Two Charts That Every Gold Investor Needs to Keep an Eye On (Bloomberg) How U.S. companies could mend America’s crumbling infrastructure with overseas cash (MarketWatch) … [Read more...]

Is the British Pound a Good Buy Today?

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The biggest casualty of the Brexit vote thus far has not been the stock market or the bond market as many predicted, but the market for British pounds. The pound sold-off yesterday and is now trading at a more than two-decade low. Technical analysts would likely tell you that charts don’t offer much in the way of support for the world’s former premier reserve currency. Based on the charts, a move toward parity looks possible, though we wouldn’t say probable. For some perspective, I’ve included a long-term chart (yes really, really, long) on the pound / dollar exchange rate.  The pound is … [Read more...]

Liberty Media Outflanks Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway

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Barron’s informs readers: Few people have made more money for investors over the past three decades than John Malone. The billionaire cable-TV investor and operator parlayed a small group of cable systems, originally assembled in the 1970s, into Tele-Communications Inc., before selling it to AT&T in 1999 for $48 billion. Starting over with a handful of former TCI assets, Malone has, through an often mind-bending series of financial maneuvers, built another cable and media empire, Liberty Media. And together with Greg Maffei, Liberty’s CEO since 2005, he’s still building. Investors … [Read more...]

Are the Days of Walking into Your Local Bank Ending?

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Swissinfo.ch warns readers that the days of over-the-counter banking are in permanent descent, and that other trends are quickly emerging. Being able to walk into a bank and speak to someone over a counter is a disappearing service in Switzerland. The number of branches has almost halved from around 4,500 at the beginning of the 1990s to some 2,500 today. The reason for the 20% annual drop in branches is that more and more people are using e-banking: paying bills and keeping track of their finances online. Geneva: doing business post-banking secrecy … [Read more...]

Alert: Buy Ratings to the Highest Bidder

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This is a disturbing trend. Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports that some companies are now paying brokerage clients to cover them. This is similar to the credit rating agency model that has been criticized so often for the conflicted advice it produces, but this is worse, much worse. Here’s more from BusinessWeek (emphasis is mine) With brokers increasingly unable to subsidize research with indirect payments, France’s Natixis SA is pioneering a novel approach: charge clients for coverage, a model that has proved fraught with conflicts for debt-rating companies. Analysts Jean-Jacques Le Fur and … [Read more...]

Worthy Reads: Negative-Yielding Bonds Jump to Almost $12 Trillion

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China’s yuan earns coveted IMF distinction: Here’s what you need to know (MarketWatch) Why So Few Economists Are Prepared to Say Recession Risks Are Fading (WSJ) Negative-Yielding Bonds Jump to Almost $12 Trillion (Bloomberg) African oil exporters wasted economic opportunity, study claims (FT) US Construction Spending Crashes Into Contraction For First Time In 5 Years (ZeroHedge) … [Read more...]

Government Investment in the Stock Market?

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What do you do when after years of insisting that bigger stimulus and more government intervention for more time are the exact recipe for economic success, only to discover that your cherished theories have come up short? Cue the esteemed former Treasury Secretary (and possibly future Fed Chair) Mr. Lawrence Summers. This is the same Mr. Summers who contends that the disappointing rate of economic growth for the last number of years is a problem of secular stagnation and not a problem of poor policy and burdensome regulation. Seems a little convenient coming from one of President Obama’s … [Read more...]

America’s Annual Trade Surplus from 1870 to 1970

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What kind of government structure would allow our country to outsource its future? Exactly what has happened to turn America into a world trade banana republic? Pat Buchanan offers gory details: America’s allies are cheating and robbing her blind on trade. According to the WTO, Britain, France, Spain, Germany, and the EU pumped $22 billion in illegal subsidies into Airbus to swindle Boeing out of the sale of 375 commercial jets. Subsidies to the A320 caused lost sales of 271 Boeing 737s, writes journalist Alan Boyle. Yet even as Europeans collude and cheat to capture America’s … [Read more...]