Salient to Investors: Jonathan Gray at Blackstone said: The institutional buying wave has passed and Blackstone’s acquisition pace has declined 70 percent from its peak last year Blackstone has narrowed most of its purchasing to Seattle, Atlanta, Miami, Orlando and Tampa. Institutional buyers are tapering their buying and are
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Credit Suisse said: Chinese buyers are pouring into the Australian residential market every year, pricing out a generation of Australians from the housing market, with many facing a lifetime of renting. Over the past 5 years, Sydney prices have risen by 45% and Melbourne by more
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: Yao Wei at Societe Generale said it will be very challenging to achieve everything promised in Li’s work report and that something has to give in speeding up reform, fighting pollution, managing debt risk, keeping the same growth target. Dong Tao at Credit Suisse said it would
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Australia’s Q4 GDP exceeded the median economist estimate. Paul Bloxham at HSBC said the rebalancing act is under way, and a great comfort for the RBA – rate cuts are off the table and interest rates may have to rise before year-end. Katrina Ell at Moody’s Analytics said
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Home prices are rising faster than incomes in much of the US. Thomas Lawler at Lawler Economic & Housing Consulting said the decline of first-time homebuyers, hurt by rising prices and tougher credit standards threatens to widen the wealth gap between owners and renters. Lawler said potential
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Chua Hak Bin at Bank of America Merrill Lynch said: Total foreign direct investment into Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand was $128.4 billion in 2103 versus $117.6 billion for China. Rising foreign direct investment into Asean will remain a favorable structural trend over the
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: Strategas Research Partners said stocks are cheap. Of the respective 15-year average, their value in P/E ratio terms is 95%, in enterprise value to cash flow is 85%, in oil terms is 65%, and in gold terms is 58%. Jason Trennert at Strategas said a number of their
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Jim O’Neill said: We are closer to a buying opportunity in emerging-market stocks than to joining in the panic. While some places in the emerging world have real problems, to herald an emerging-market crisis is ridiculous. Ukraine, Thailand, Argentina and Turkey have some serious issues. The Fed decision
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