Your Survival Guy likes a bond ladder, and treasuries certainly need to play a role. Take a look at the treasury yield curve below and notice that rates are much more attractive for bond investors today than they have been in years. New excitement in treasuries is coming as yields have risen and investors flee riskier assets. Matt Grossman reports for The Wall Street Journal: Rising rates carried the yield on two-year Treasurys to 4.206% on Friday, up from 2.925% when the quarter began. That caps the two-year yield’s largest gain through a year’s first nine months since 1981. The … [Read more...]
BLOCK: Green Energy Sector “Filled with Lies and BS”
Famed short seller, Carson Block, has set his sights on a new target, green energy companies. He says the sector is "filled with lies and bullshit." The Financial Times reports: Few prospects can be more unpleasant for a corporate leader than attracting the sustained interest of Carson Block. The founder of short-selling hedge fund Muddy Waters shot to prominence more than a decade ago by loudly — and correctly — describing the Canadian-listed Chinese timber company Sino-Forest as a fraud. A string of high-profile short bets followed, against targets ranging from then FTSE 100 healthcare … [Read more...]
Biden Panics After Saudis Ignore Him to Work with the Russians
Throughout his career, Joe Biden has billed himself as a "foreign policy expert." That expertise doesn't appear effective at the moment. When the American people need relief on energy prices (mostly because of Biden's anti-energy policies), the Saudi Arabian government is working with Russia to raise oil prices. The Daily Mail reports on the snub: American drivers could face another increase in gas prices as the OPEC+ alliance announced it is cutting oil production by up to two million barrels a day in what could end up being a massive setback for the Biden administration. Energy ministers … [Read more...]
My Money Sleeps: “I Never Bought a Car as an Investment in My Life,” Jay Leno
“I never bought a car as an investment in my life,” explained Jay Leno back in 2015 when a guy offered him $12 million for a McLaren he had bought twenty years prior for $800k (watch the video below for why he doesn’t sell). Gale Warning During Newport’s Concours and Motor Week “I work, and my money sleeps,” says Leno. But don’t think his money’s not working. His money works. He simply gives it plenty of time and space to compound and to do its thing. Time to Get Your Lazy Cash Off the Couch Now, if you’re a regular here at YourSurvivalGuy.com, you know how frustrating lazy … [Read more...]
Contagion Hits China’s Property Markets
Chinese investors and home buyers are facing a contagion of bad news in China's property markets. The Financial Times reports: Contagion is spreading into the deep tissue of China’s political economy. What began as a property crisis — characterised by slumping apartment sales and a rash of debt defaults by developers — is now morphing into a financial crunch at the local government level. A new world of difficult choices looms before Chinese policymakers as a crucial congress of the ruling Communist party this month looks set to award another term in office to Xi Jinping, China’s … [Read more...]
Gale Warning During Newport’s Concours and Motor Week
Happy Monday from Your Survival Guy. What a weekend. Weather-wise a rainout, which is a shame because it was Newport’s Concours & Motor Week—celebrating the history of sportsmanship and motoring. Your Retirement Life: The New Mustang Arrives Here was the forecast Sunday morning: “Gale Warning in Effect through Monday Morning, at 7:02am EDT Sunday Oct. 2, 2022. Northeast winds 25 to 30 knots with gust up to 40 knots, seas 6 to 9 feet, a chance of showers, mainly this morning.” Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season Not exactly the weather you want to showcase your … [Read more...]
Is China’s Looming Population Decline Going to Cripple Its Ambitions?
Just as China seems poised to inherit global leadership, it's facing a massive demographic challenge—it has too many old people. China's long-running one-child policy achieved its goal and turned China's population charts into an upside-down pyramid, with a small young population, and a large older population. Now the results are catching up to the Middle Kingdom. Elanor Olcott reports in the Financial Times: China’s president Xi Jinping is poised to secure an unprecedented third term as leader at a congress of his Communist party this month, but behind the political theatre a broader shift … [Read more...]
Corporate Bond Yields: What You Can Earn Today
Corporate bonds are a good place to pick up yield in the bond market. With yields on government bonds in much of Europe and Japan in negative territory, corporate bonds offer a higher-yielding alternative. Corporate bonds are a broad universe, though. There are investment-grade corporate bonds, junk bonds, foreign corporate bonds, hybrid corporate bonds, and floating-rate corporate bonds among other variations. Investment-grade corporate bonds are the largest part of the corporate bond market. How Much Do Corporate Bonds Yield Today? We break the investment-grade corporate bond … [Read more...]
What You Start to See Is a Death Spiral
Your Survival Guy is never surprised about these headlines during troubled markets. Here’s a beauty from yesterday in the WSJ, “Pension Strategy Left Funds Vulnerable to Rate Increases.” Apparently, pension managers were using leverage and collateral to hedge against rate increases, but when the collateral loses value, margin calls come a-knockin'. And like clockwork, when bad stuff happens, it always seems to be a surprise. State Pension Funds Brace for Private Equity Losses From the WSJ: Pension funds adopted the so-called liability-driven investment strategy, or LDI, to address … [Read more...]
Did China Cripple Its Economy with Covid Lockdowns?
Since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, China has used harsh lockdowns of entire cities to tamp down outbreaks. Now it looks like the negative effects of that hard lockdown strategy may be coming home to roost. Stella Yifan Xie reports for The Wall Street Journal, writing: Chinese economic activity remained feeble in September, with the services sector slipping into contraction, offering new evidence of the damage that Beijing’s Covid-prevention measures and a deepening real estate slide are inflicting on the country’s economy. Activity in the services sector, which includes the retail, … [Read more...]
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