Salient to Investors: Fareed Zakaria said: The Iran nuclear agreement is flawed, but has the toughest terms ever negotiated and sets back Iran’s nuclear program more than any serious military campaign would. Automatic re-imposition of sanctions can be triggered unilaterally by the US. Iran gets sanctions relief regardless because allies will not extend sanctions
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: James Hickman writes: Uninterrupted streaks in which the S&P 500 closes within 10% of its all time peak historically precede sudden declines: viz the tech bubble of the 1990s and the credit/housing bubble of the 2000s. The median decline from the peak is 43% and typically takes 13
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Dani Rodrik at Harvard said: Emerging markets may be seen to be in deep trouble but do not deserve the doom-and-gloom treatment they are getting. Stronger economic headwinds ahead will make it easier to distinguish countries that have strengthened economic and political fundamentals from those that have relied
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Fareed Zakaria said: Obama is an optimist about the world and America’s place in it – historically, optimists have tended to be right. Iran’s Gulf enemies outspend it militarily by 8 to 1, America by 40 to 1. Iran is being forced to fight on two fronts
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Bill Gross at Janus Capital said: The global economy is dangerously close to deflationary growth. Any whiff of deflation and things tend to reverse and go badly. The CRB Commodity Index is lower than in 2008 when Lehman went bankrupt. Oil, metals and crops have plunged due to
READ MORE... →David Stockman writes: Wall Street believes the sideways market of the last 6 months is a healthy market correction in time, not price, and that markets cannot go down unless there is a recession and that none is remotely in sight. We are in month 74 of the current recovery, beyond
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: David Stockman writes: Laszlo Birinyi says S&P 3200 will be reached by 2017 because there is no reason it cannot keep rising. Since first meeting Birinyi in 1986, I do not ever recall when he was not bullish on equities. His call is wrong because the central bank fed 30-year bull run
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Fareed Zakaria said: New America reports that, since 9-11, 74 people have been killed in America by terrorists vs. over 150,000 killed in gun homicides. ShootingTracker.com says that in the first 207 days of 2015 America had 207 mass shootings. Gunpolicy.org says America’s gun homicide rate is 50 times
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Stephen Roach at Yale writes: Market manipulation a la China is now standard operating procedure in policy circles around the world – the West just dresses up their manipulation in different clothes. QE is essentially an aggressive effort to manipulate asset prices: whether it has succeeded is debatable
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The IMF said: European growth will rise to 1.7% in 2016 versus 1.5% in 2015 thanks to falling oil prices, a weaker euro and ECB actions this year. Europe remains vulnerable to shocks that could bring prolonged stagnation, like Greece or a moderate shock to confidence from lower expected
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