Salient to Investors: Jim Vogel and Chris Low at FTN Financial said: Treasuries are years away from reverting to pre-financial crisis levels as growth remains weak and several hundred thousand people fall out of the labor force. Yields will end 2014 at 2.55 percent versus the median estimate of 3.07 percent.
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Ed Yardeni at Yardeni Research said a common worry was that the drop in bond yields may be predicting economic slowdown. Investors Intelligence’s percentage of bulls is at the highest level since January 2005. The conventional wisdom, at least among fixed-income traders and the smartest stock traders,
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Jeremy Grantham at GMO said: The slow recovery is due to the Fed’s actions. In the 1980s the US had an aggregate debt level of 1.3 times GDP versus 3.3 times debt now and yet GDP has been slowed – showing that more debt or QE does
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Shares of high-dividend-yielding companies are trading near the lowest level in almost 3 years relative to the market. Jack Ablin at BMO Private Bank said the favorable investment backdrop of low interest rates is reversing and if the US economy stays on its current path, 10-yr Treasury
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Bill Gross at Pimco said: If central banks can convince investors that their policies can reproduce the old normal economy, then risk assets will have higher future returns and outperform cash, trickling down to respectable growth rates and lower global unemployment. Central banks must shift to qualitative
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The spread between the 2-yr China sovereign yield and the similar-maturity interest-rate swap, a gauge of financial stress, last week reached the widest in Bloomberg data going back to 2007. George Soros and Bill Gross have drawn parallels between the situation in China and that in the
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Jason Brady at Thornburg Investment Mgmt recently bought Treasuries as yields approached a 2-yr high of 3 percent. Brady said every single strategist decided towards the end of 2013 that stocks were the best thing in the world and bonds were the worst thing in the world
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Paresh Upadhyaya at Pioneer Investment Mgmt said January was definitely a surprise for investors. Neil Azous agreed. Fixed-income assets worldwide posted their biggest January returns since 2008, while equity prices fell the most since 2010. Gold is rallying. Joseph Quinlan at US Trust Bank of America said this
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Jeremy Siegel at Wharton said: No bull market rises in a straight line so this is a correction only and typical of a market climbing a wall of worry. Dow headed to 18000 by year-end. Fair market value is $18000 as the S&P 500 has sold for an
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Kristin Forbes at MIT said Bernanke was incredibly creative in the different steps and programs he took to prevent a free fall of the global economy, and made decisions with highly imperfect information, necessary in a crisis. Vincent Reinhart at Morgan Stanley said the Fed legacy is
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