Why Fall May Bring Fresh Highs for Stocks and Higher Bond Prices – Forbes 09-05-14

Salient to Investors: Scott Minerd at Guggenheim Partners writes: The world is awash with liquidity and the promise of more easy money and QE in Europe bodes well for equities and bond prices. The recent high of the NYSE Advance-Decline Line is bullish. In Europe, negative deposit rates should encourage commercial banks

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Pimco’s Gross Says Weak Credit Creation Jeopardizes U.S. Growth – Bloomberg 09-03-14

Salient to Investors: Bill Gross at Pimco said: Insufficient credit creation with 2% economic growth jeopardizes US growth because our credit-based financial economy depends on an ever-expanding outstanding level of credit for its survival. If the credit growth is more than 4.5% a year, then private and public sectors must create

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Three Pie Charts That Prove You Shouldn’t Slack Off in College – BloombergBusinessWeek 09-02-14

Salient to Investors: Richard Arum at NYU and Josipa Roksa of University of Virginia found: Students who did as little as possible during college continued to drift after graduation. Many college students took easy courses, regarded themselves as privileged customers, socialized heavily, and came away with little to show for

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Fareed Zakaria GPS – CNN 08-31-14

Salient to Investors: Fareed Zakaria said: Defeating ISIS would require a large and sustained strategic effort from the US but without significant numbers of US ground troops. ISIS videos of executions are designed to sow terror in the minds of opponents who when facing ISIS fighters now reportedly flee rather

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Boomer Wealth Dented by Mortgages Poses U.S. Risk – Bloomberg 08-28-14

Salient to Investors: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau reports the share of Americans 65 and older with mortgage debt rose to 30% in 2011 with a median debt adjusted for inflation of $79,000,  from 22% in 2001 with a median debt of $43,400. The increase in mortgage debt makes these households more susceptible

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Hatzius Sees Little Pent-Up U.S. Wage Deflation Yellen Cited – Bloomberg 08-27-14

Salient to Investors: Jan Hatzius at Goldman Sachs said: There is little evidence of the “pent-up wage deflation” that Yellen cites as a possible reason behind the slow increase in earnings and says the opposite was true, with the areas having below-average wage growth during the recession now showing above-average

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Equities Reach Record $66 Trillion as S&P 500 Hits 2,000 – Bloomberg 08-27-14

Salient to Investors: The value of equities globally is at a record $66 trillion versus $25 trillion in March 2009 and $63 trillion at the 2007 peak. The US stock rally is approaching the dot-com bubble in terms of speed, but not in valuations – at 16.8x estimated earnings versus 26x at

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