Salient to Investors: Robert Lutts at Cabot Money Mgmt the underlying support for the labor market is driven by housing and potentially construction finally returning. Lutts said QE and lower interest rates are finally having an impact as signalled by the stock market. Troy Logan at Warren Financial Service said employment has stabilized – key is
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Net worth for households and non-profit groups in Q4 2012 increased to the highest level since Q4 2007 on a recovery in home values – $66.1 trillion versus $67.4 trillion in Q3 2007. Paul Edelstein at IHS Global Insight said households have acquired a lot of financial
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Ex-trader Chris Arnade writes: The asymmetry in pay is the engine behind many of Wall Street’s mistakes and rewards short-term gains with disregard to long-term consequences. The result is over-reliance on excessive leverage, banks loaded up with opaque financial products, and flawed trading models. Wall Street’s pay
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s MOVE Index signal that the zero to 0.25 percent range won’t increase for more than 2 years, a bullish sign for bonds. Krishna Memani at OppenheimerFunds said the Fed has been very articulate about the direction of short-term rates, which is entirely data
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Ivo Weinoehrl at DWS Investments said the macro economic picture has improved a little, but no reason to get excited. Weinoehrl said sequestration will cut a half percent off growth in 2013, so the equity market is fully valued – the debt ceiling will be a much
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Sheila Bair at Pew Charitable Trusts said US regulators lack the courage to designate non-bank financial companies systemically important and are not doing their job. Bair said regulators cannot even name as systemic those companies in the crisis, like AIG and GE Capital, that were named as systemic – yet we
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Jessada Sookdhis at CIMB-Principal Asset Mgmt said China is clearly recovering, especially in the property sector, while US data and Italian debt sales have bolstered sentiment in emerging markets. The MSCI Emerging Markets Index is at 10.5 times projected 12-month earnings versus 13.8 for the MSCI World Index. Martial
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: E. William Stone at PNC Wealth Management doesn’t expect massive impact from the impending spending cuts, but says there is fear of the unknown and an anticipation of increased volatility. William Murray at the IMF said sequestration means reevaluation of growth forecasts. Read the full article at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-28/u-s-stock-index-futures-little-changed-before-gdp-report.html Free
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: FRB of Chicago President Charles Evans said: The Fed must avoid removing accommodation prematurely, as the Japanese did. The US economy will grow 2.5 to 3 percent in 2013 and 3.5 percent to 4 percent in 2014, and unemployment will be at or slightly below 7 percent by year-end
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Zhu Min at the IMF said the financial market structure did not change very much and we are not safer. Sanford Weill, John Reed, David Komansky and Philip Purcell have said that financial conglomerates could be more valuable and safer if split apart. Amar Bhide at Tufts University says no one can
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