Salient to Investors: Resistance to hiring will help push S&P 500 Index profit margins above 10 percent next year, the highest ever. The 5-year rally has restored $14 trillion to share prices, yet US payrolls remain 1.5 million below the level in 2008. Michael Holland at Holland & Co said
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Bill O’Neill at UBS Wealth Mgmt said the story is still the combination of easy money policies and expectations of growth into 2014 and that growth is on the horizon. The Investment Companies Institute reports individual investors gave $30 billion to managers in 2013, the first net
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The smallest US current-account deficit since 1999 shows the US is a lesser supporter of global growth than in the past. Exploration and production are adding to growth, reducing spending on imported energy, cheaper fuel and raw materials are boosting manufacturing, making the US more of a
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Jim Rogers said: Fed policy is incompetent and the Federal Reserve should be eliminated. The world has survived just fine without central banks for most of its history, America has had 3 central banks – the first two disappeared – and this one will self-destruct because it
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: David Stockman said: QE is brewing asset bubbles around the world, exporting its lunatic policy worldwide Central banks all over the world have been massively expanding their balance sheets, and as a result of that there are bubbles in everything in the world, asset values are exaggerated
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Ryan Sweet at Moody’s Analytics said conditions for stronger growth are falling into place for early 2014, and housing will kick in and spur faster growth. Michelle Girard at RBS Securities expects the shopping season to be OK as employment growth of around 200,000 jobs a month
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Alan Greenspan said: The US economy will grow closer to 2 percent in 2014 as it is restrained by a degree of uncertainty that is reducing investment, below the median economist estimate of 2.6 percent. The US stock market is not in a bubble. The economy is
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Richard Koo at Nomura said: Mini-bubbles can occur during a balance sheet recession, like this one. Not yet seeing a big bubble, but concerned about mini bubbles. In a monetary policy-driven market, money created by an accommodative central bank typically spreads throughout the economy and lifts markets. During
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Ellen Zentner at Morgan Stanley said: The Fed’s near-zero interest rate and QE is holding down US bond rates, meaning the US Treasury yield curve would struggle to invert, crimping its effectiveness as an indicator of business cycles. Yield curve inversion signals investors are betting on weaker
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: David Kostin at Goldman Sachs said: The S&P 500 will fall 10 percent in the next 12 months before rebounding to end 2014 at 1,900, end 2015 at 2,100 and end 2016 at 2,200. The overall market should rise because the US economy will be getting better.
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