Salient to Investors: Alice Schroeder writes: By many accounts, Warren Buffett has pulled off another brilliant feat in spotting an opportunity in food stocks, yet he never made a significant investment when Heinz lagged the S&P 500 from December 2008 to January 2013, and since January 1997. Heinz’s stock was fairly priced before the
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Brad Sorensen at Charles Schwab said the economic numbers are holding up really well, and housing rebounding will continue, feeding into consumer confidence. 74 percent of S&P 500 companies so far reporting quarterly results have beat estimates. The index is at 14.8 times reported earnings versus the average
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Kenneth Heebner at the CGM Focus Fund has bet 21 percent of his find on a decline in U.S. Treasuries as the growing US economy eventually prompts the Fed to boost interest rates. At the end of 2012, the fund was 29 percent invested in banks, 24 percent in homebuilders. Heebner said
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Jeremy Grantham at Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo said: All global asset prices are too high because of Federal expansive monetary policy. US companies, other than quality stocks with stable earnings and low debt, and most global growth equities, are brutally overpriced. US large-caps, excluding quality stocks, will lose
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Bank of America Merrill Lynch indexes show the gap in yields between linkers and governments reached a 21-month high of 1.70 percent. Economists forecast consumer-price gains of 2.72 percent in 2013, in line with the 10-year average. Index-linked securities are favored because sovereign-debt returns are being erased
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Jim Rogers says: The US economy is poised for a major crash. Do not trust any of the positive news coming from any world government. Everybody is printing money but it is artificial, has never been good for anybody and cannot continue. We are in a fool’s paradise
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Correlation between the Euro Stoxx 50 Index and the MSCI All-Country World Index has fallen to the lowest level since 2008. The Euro Stoxx 50 trades at 10.9 times estimated earnings versus 13.7 for the S&P 500 and 14.8 for the MSCI Asia Pacific Index. Trevor Greetham at Fidelity Worldwide is underweight
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The financial foundation of leading-edge boomers is stronger in the aggregate than commonly assumed, and is likely to improve in coming years. A study by Alan Gustman at Dartmouth, Thomas Steinmeier at Texas Tech and Nahid Tabatabai at Dartmouth found that the inflation–adjusted wealth of people aged
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: A paper written by Frederic Mishkin at Columbia University, David Greenlaw at Morgan Stanley, James D. Hamilton at the University of California in San Diego, and Peter Hooper at Deutsche Bank Securities said: The Fed’s hold on policy may weaken should possible losses on its balance sheet coincide with high US budget
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: 5 of the 8 most accurate forecasters of the US economy in the two years ended in December 2012 were outside the US. International forecasters use methods based on tracking sales and factory reports and largely ignore public surveys of confidence. Joshua Shapiro at Maria Fiorini Ramirez consciously try to
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