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
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Jan Freitag at STR said from May through July, the most hotel room nights were sold since they began tracking the data in 1987, while reservations for Saturday nights, at almost 83% occupancy in July, is an indication of the healthy return of leisure travel. STR predicts revpar
READ MORE... →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
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Millennials may find it more difficult to climb the corporate ladder as new businesses, which employ more young workers, become a smaller force in the labor market. Gary Burtless at Brookings said rapid progress for new and young workers is much rarer in long-established firms. Burtless said
READ MORE... →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
READ MORE... →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
READ MORE... →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
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The CBO predicts: A declining jobless rate will raise tax revenues and shrink the US budget deficit to $469 billion in 2015, $506 billion in the 12 months ending September 30 – versus predictions of $492 billion in April and $680 billion in 2013, and a record $1.4 trillion
READ MORE... →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
READ MORE... →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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