Klaus Vedfelt/DigitalVision via Getty Images The iShares MSCI Denmark ETF (BATS:EDEN) tracks the MSCI Denmark index and has $290M in assets across 52 total assets at the time of writing. The Danish economy has captured news headlines in the last year, due in part to Novo Nordisk’s (NVO) meteoric rise on the back of weight…
pagadesign Well, the U.S. budget situation has ascended to the lead opinion piece in the Financial Times. We read about “The long shadows of America’s growing debt.” And, the editors of the Financial Times close with “Sooner or later policymakers need to engage in bipartisan efforts to think seriously about how America funds itself responsibly….
Monty Rakusen Eric Oak of the Supply Chain Insights team co-authored this report The Biden administration announced a new round of tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum from mainland China, including a more than three-fold increase in the Section 301 tariff rate for Chinese steel imports. Given the upcoming US elections in November, the…
Sean Pavone/iStock via Getty Images Real Estate Weekly Outlook U.S. equity markets advanced for a second week, while benchmark interest rates retreated from five-month highs after a critical slate of employment data showed perhaps the most definitive signs yet of a long-awaited cooldown in labor market trends. Foreshadowed by surprisingly “dovish” remarks from Fed Chair…
Klaus Vedfelt The Japanese yen (dollar/yen) traded Monday to 160.17, the first time above 160 since April 1990. The yen rallied to 154.54 after purported intervention. The Japanese currency had weakened back to 157.94 by Wednesday, before a second round of intervention pushed the dollar/yen down to 153. It was back above 156 on Thursday,…
Kobus Louw By Kristin Cejda With a growing deal pipeline, opportunities in investment grade credit are growing. Mergers and acquisitions have been a key theme for investment grade credit thus far in 2024. Companies have mandates to grow, cash to invest, attractive equity valuations to use as currency, and strong balance sheets to use—setting up…
Justin Paget/DigitalVision via Getty Images The 10yr minus 3mo Treasury rate, called the Yield Curve, is moving higher at a rapid pace as investors adjust their inflation thinking to being more persistent in the 3-4% range. At the moment, T-Bills priced at 5.25% remained roughly stable, giving a Real rate of return of close to…
Ekaterina79 Despite close calls Saturday night and again on Thursday night, we at least made it through the week avoiding “the start of WWIII.” I’m afraid the same cannot be said for the beginning of WWDD (World-Wide De-Risking/Deleveraging). Key speculative leverage epicenters were under notable pressure this week – global bond markets, EM currencies and…
Paper Boat Creative Quant Investment research and stock picks come from many places, but not all resources are created equal. Computer-driven strategies – the power of quantitative analysis and collecting and analyzing numerical data in a fraction of the time – offer investors the opportunity to instantly evaluate stocks to help avoid companies with poor…
Boy Wirat I’ve only recently returned from several weeks in Argentina. I didn’t have access to my charts, and besides, I was rather more interested in people, food, and wine than in blogging. Time now to catch up on the market’s latest focus: Is inflation still stubbornly high? Does the Fed need to tighten more?…
http://www.fotogestoeber.de/iStock via Getty Images We have been following Artificial Intelligence (AI) at Manning & Napier for decades, and despite the recent buzz, AI is not a new concept. Scientist Alan Turing wrote the first AI manifesto, “Intelligent Machinery” in 1948. Eight years later, Dartmouth College held a workshop where the term “artificial intelligence” was coined…
Hiraman Are we in a new demand cycle for tech hardware as the COVID-era PC- and smartphone-purchase boom hits the first leg of its replacement cycle? And will AI-enabling devices act as a tailwind? If so, how can investors benefit? Those are the questions we sought to answer earlier this year when five of our…
Yagi Studio Quality is a word thrown around a lot when it comes to picking stocks, but unless you can quantify what quality means, it doesn’t really mean much. Quality does matter, but it needs to be rules-based in my view to truly have confidence in a portfolio that claims to use that as the…
Emanuel M Schwermer/DigitalVision via Getty Images Freeport-McMoRan (NYSE: NYSE:FCX) is up almost 50% from its late-November 2023 lows, when we last recommended investing. The company has been supported by strong global economic strength and strength in metal demand. That’s combined with continued concerns about a copper shortage. As we’ll see throughout this article, the company…
VioletaStoimenova/E+ via Getty Images Investment thesis Growth with low risk is a description that captures the essence of FTI Consulting, Inc. (NYSE:FCN). The company works with many large and prominent clients in the legal, banking, Fortune 100, and private equity firms. Since going public in 1996, its share price has grown 24-fold in 28 years….
MicroStockHub The macroeconomic and geopolitical developments have not changed substantially over the past month. The resilience of the US economy allows the Federal Reserve to put more emphasis on achieving price stability. While the market favors a June cut (66% vs. 80% at the end of February), it has not been fully discounted for over…
da-kuk A few weeks ago, we used this space to write about China and India, the two largest countries in the world by population that both figure prominently into the global economy. If you recall from our commentary that week, India’s stock market has been going gangbusters while China’s has brought nothing but disappointment to…
Jonathan Kitchen Listen here or on the go via Apple and Spotify. Amrita Roy, The Pragmatic Optimist, joins Rob Isbitts to discuss why she’s neutral on S&P 500 right now (2:25). Short-term interest rates have peaked, long-term rates should normalize; bullish on (TLT) (6:15). Macro investing, equity selection: Zscaler, GitLab, and Pinterest (17:40). Transcript Rob…
Victor Golmer Fisker Inc. (NYSE:FSR) is in a very precarious situation and it might even slide into bankruptcy which I think makes the stock uninvestable at the present time. Though the electric-vehicle manufacturer just announced a $150 million financing commitment from an investor, Fisker also announced that it was pausing production for six weeks in…
takasuu Co-authored with “Beyond Saving.” Today, I want to address a topic that might be uncomfortable, but one that is a great concern to many investors: Our mortality. As you approach your retirement, your main focus would be towards ensuring that you have enough so that you can live out the rest of your life…
yalcinsonat1 No, Jay Powell did not do a happy dance at the post-FOMC press conference, but the Fed chair was feeling good on Wednesday and it showed. And why not? The big takeaway from the much-anticipated “dot plot” – the Summary Economic Projections representing Committee members’ best guesses about the economy and interest rates –…
Funtap To no one’s surprise, the FOMC held its target rate range constant at 5.25-5.5% and continued the process of letting its securities run off as they mature. In support of that decision, the committee’s statement cited data suggesting that job gains remain strong, the economy is expanding at a solid pace, and inflation has…
This article was written by Follow Michael A. Gayed is portfolio manager, and author of five award-winning research papers on market anomalies and investing. He has a BS with a double major in Finance & Management from NYU Stern School of Business, and is a CFA Charterholder. Michael runs the investing group The Lead-Lag Report,…
Tarathip Kwankeeree Recent data on the US employment market is sending mixed signals, raising concerns about potential turbulence ahead. While overall job numbers appear positive, three key indicators point to underlying weaknesses that could undermine the job market’s momentum. Finding A Job Is Getting Increasingly Difficult Continued claims for unemployment insurance have materially increased in…
halbergman Co-authored by Treading Softly. Finding a home is an important step for every person. The ability to find a place to live is essential to be able to establish a home base that you then operate from, whether you’re going to work, whether it’s a place to simply cook a meal or to lay…
Andrii Yalanskyi/iStock via Getty Images Thesis We recently wrote a piece on the iShares Core S&P MidCap ETF (IJH), a large ETF representing a cornerstone of investing in the mid-cap space. Today we are going to follow-up on that theme with another name, more specifically the Invesco S&P MidCap 400 Revenue ETF (NYSEARCA:RWK). RWK represents…
Kirill Stytsenko/iStock via Getty Images There has been a dramatic adjustment to US rates. The two-year yield was near 4.40% before the US employment report on March 8 and it reached near 4.73% before the weekend. The 25 bp surge is the largest weekly increase since last May. For the first time in four months,…
pavlen Investors have been waiting for a broadening out of the rally for even longer than they’ve been pricing in (and then pricing out) rate cuts, but while breadth may still be relatively narrow, there has been a good deal of rotation recently. Let’s start with where the market stood heading into today. We measure…
cherrybeans Nine times out of 10, I don’t recommend pursuing high-yield dividend stocks. Not when it comes to real estate investment trusts (“REITs”) or when it comes to non-REITs. I’m a safety-first kind of guy, and chasing yield alone is the opposite of safety. As I write in REITs for Dummies, sucker yields refer to…
peshkov Shares of Petróleo Brasileiro S.A. – Petrobras (NYSE:PBR) crashed more than 10% after the Brazilian energy company reported fourth-quarter earnings and suspended making extraordinary dividend payments. Despite Petrobras reporting strong Q4 earnings and free cash flow, the company’s valuation declined by more than $11B. Concerns about increasing government involvement as well as a possible…
Eoneren In truth, I don’t like the term “smart beta.” Great marketing term, but at the end of the day, that’s all it is. It’s a term used to describe a style of factor investing that, like all things in markets, will have cycles where it works, and cycles where it doesn’t. Despite my displeasure…
Douglas Rissing The Senate on Friday passed a $460 billion spending bill to keep the U.S. government operating, taking a potential shutdown for several agencies off the table for the rest of the fiscal year.” Kathy Stech Ferek, Wall Street Journal. “Friday’s measure authorizes the funding of federal agencies through the end of the current…
mesh cube The rally in semiconductors is starting to run out of superlatives to describe it. Just when you think it has to take a breather, it turns around and rallies another few percent. Yesterday, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) closed more than 17% above its 50-day moving average and 36% above its 200 DMA….
Dmytro Skrypnykov/iStock via Getty Images 1st Quarter 2024 Investor Newsletter March 2024 Introduction Since 1887, various groundhogs have been predicting future weather patterns in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. On February 2, Phil “the groundhog” predicted an early spring and an end to winter. While winter will officially end on March 19 at 11:06pm EST, Phil continues to…
Lemon_tm By Ewa Manthey All eyes on the Fed The key driver for the outlook of gold prices for the past year has been the Federal Reserve policy. Our US economist expects the first cut in June while swaps markets show a 65% chance of a cut in June compared with 58% at the end…
peterschreiber.media The problem of the modern economy is not a failure of a knowledge of economics; it’s a failure of a knowledge of history.” – John Kenneth Galbraith Looking at what the wise bankers of the BIS are saying relating to valuations of Tech stocks may be reaching “extreme height again” when it came to…
mdesigner125/iStock via Getty Images There is peace even in the storm” – Vincent van Gogh Today, we put QuidelOrtho Corporation (NASDAQ:QDEL) into the spotlight. The stock has lost just over a third of its value over the past few weeks as the company missed quarterly expectations, let go of its CEO and has seen several…
spawns/iStock via Getty Images Rarely are officials able to achieve the proverbial economic soft-landing when higher interest rates help cool price pressures without triggering a significant rise in unemployment or a contraction. Yet, without declaring victory, the Federal Reserve’s confidence that this will be achieved has risen. Still, its increased confidence is unlikely to lead…
Userba011d64_201 “Periphery and core” and global government finance Bubble analytical frameworks continue to offer a fruitful perspective for better understanding today’s extraordinary backdrop. At the “periphery,” China’s Bubble deflation has reached another critical stage. Here at the “core,” “Terminal Phase Excess” is also at a critical juncture. Bloomberg’s Jonathan Ferro: “You think the biggest risk…
Gary Hershorn/Corbis News via Getty Images Investment Thesis Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE) experienced a significant decline in its revenue, primarily due to a sharp decrease in sales from its COVID-19-related products and vaccines. This downturn led to a 36% drop in the company’s share price since its 52-week highs, positioning it as one of the most…
Jacob Wackerhausen/iStock via Getty Images Venus Medtech (Hangzhou) Inc. (OTC:VMTHF) (2500.HK) is desperately trying to cure its corporate ailments, after first uncovering governance issues nearly a year ago. But the Hong Kong Stock Exchange isn’t satisfied that the transcatheter device maker is healthy enough just yet to resume trading. Last week, Venus Medtech disclosed that…
da-kuk Financial market pundits are a bit like dogs chasing cars; they wouldn’t know what to do if they caught one. And so it is that after trying to figure out whether the economy and markets would achieve a soft landing in the wake of the post-Covid tightening cycle, no one quite knows what to…
Rudy Sulgan/The Image Bank via Getty Images The underlying floor of our coming markets continues to be the Fed and when they might lower interest rates. They have extolled their Quantitative Tightening as a fight with Inflation. While I have no doubt about the truthfulness of this statement, the flip side of the coin has…
SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Elevator Pitch RELX PLC (NYSE:RELX) [REL:LN] is awarded a Hold investment rating. My previous article published on December 1, 2023 drew attention to two of the company’s businesses, or more specifically, its Risk and Exhibitions business units. For the current write-up, I analyze RELX’s most recent set of results, and…
Ravitaliy Fed uncertainty leaves gold range-bound in January; industrial uses for silver may add luster to the metal’s outlook. Monthly gold market and economic insights from Imaru Casanova, Portfolio Manager, featuring her unique views on mining and gold’s portfolio benefits. Gold pauses on rate outlook Gold traded in a tight range in the first month…
SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Introduction Being a PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:PYPL) investor has been particularly frustrating. Since its peak in July 2021, the stock is down 80%. Furthermore, the stock has been bleeding slowly over the last twelve months, making lower lows and lower highs. As investors try to look past PayPal’s dismal years,…
Andriy Onufriyenko/Moment via Getty Images When investing in bitcoin (BTC-USD) as an asset, or companies that build on top of the Bitcoin network as part of an asset mix, we need some set of metrics with which to evaluate the progress of the investment thesis, and by extension, the health of the Bitcoin network. It’s…
Oselote Silver is a troubled metal. Stuck in a wide trading range since hitting $30.35 per ounce four years ago, silver is miles away from its all-time high of over $49 per ounce set by the futures market back in 2011. By contrast, gold futures traded to an all-time high of $2,152 per ounce as…
Phiromya Intawongpan By Anu Ganti American political consultant James Carville once commented that he’d like to be resurrected as the bond market because, “you can intimidate everyone.” As of July 2023, the global bond market comprises about USD 135 trillion of securities, of which rated corporate debt represents USD 23 trillion.1 U.S. corporate debt makes…
TERADAT SANTIVIVUT The 10-year Treasury Note yield fell 13 basis points last week, a move that would not normally rate any mention whatsoever, but the path of that small decline does. From Monday to Thursday, the yield fell, from high to low, by 34 basis points, a move that added 1.3% to bond prices (Aggregate…