Salient to Investors: David Kostin, Kathy Matsui, Peter Oppenheimer et al at Goldman Sachs lowered their rating on stocks to neutral and corporate credit to underweight on belief that global equities and bonds may drop in the next 3 months, and stocks may temporarily fall, as rising inflation boosts government bonds and
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Elizabeth Green at Chalkbeat writes: Americans have come up with better ways to teach math but have failed to implement them: from the 1800s to the failures in the 1960s and 1980s through to today. The reason is the absence of a good system for helping teachers
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Jeremy Bowles at Bruegel said 54% of EU jobs are at risk of advances in computerization, ranging from 40% to over 60% in each country and close to the US number in the UK, Germany and France. Carl Frey and Michael Osborne at Oxford University estimated in September
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Chinese millionaires who invest at least $4.7 million and qualify for Australian residency can get around China’s restrictions on converting currency and sending it abroad. China caps the amount of yuan that individuals can convert into other currencies every year at the equivalent of $50,000 and bars transferring currency
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Ray Stone at Stone & McCarthy Research said the extent of labor-market slack may be less than Yellen purports. Stone’s favorite pay measure is table B-9 at the very end of the jobs report: an index that takes into account average hourly earnings, the length of the
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The last two Fed tightening cycles saw gains in debt securities from Treasuries to junk bonds: between June 2004 and June 2006 when the Fed raised rates to 5.25 percent from 1 percent, and in the 7 months ended January 2000 when rates rose 1.75 percent. Paul Zemsky at Voya Investment
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Chris Rupkey at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ said we cannot keep getting payroll numbers like these and not admit that the labor market has healed. Rupkey said states with higher unemployment are seeing steep declines, and big-number declines equal big progress on putting America back to work.
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Jeremy Grantham said: The stock market is expensive and headed for a bubble at S&P 500 above 2250, and offers paltry returns for years to come. Expect an explosion of M&As to record numbers due to cheaper debt in this cycle, profit margins that will remain high, a still young
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Gary Shilling writes: Persistently slow growth will NOT be the norm for years to come. When private-sector deleveraging is completed, real GDP growth will return to its long-run trend of 3.5 percent or more. Productivity will return to 2.5 percent annual growth or more after deleveraging is
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Over 33% of a Bloomberg poll of international investors say the euro economy is in its worst shape in more than a year and in danger of dropping into deflation, and the ECB is not doing enough to help. Cyril Blaise at Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria said
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