Salient to Investors: David Stockman writes: Laszlo Birinyi says S&P 3200 will be reached by 2017 because there is no reason it cannot keep rising. Since first meeting Birinyi in 1986, I do not ever recall when he was not bullish on equities. His call is wrong because the central bank fed 30-year bull run
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Laszlo Birinyi said: The market is now so dominated by institutional investors, hedge funds and service industries, that sentiment drives prices more than anything else, so predictions based on valuation data going back a hundred years are bound to fail. Recent developments in Amazon, Google, and Chipotle clearly show
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Individual investors have added $100 billion to equity mutual funds and ETFs in the past year, 10 times more than the previous 12 months, and vs. outflows of $300 billion in the 5 years through 2012 and inflows of $102 billion in Q1 2000 just before the tech
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Laszlo Birinyi at Birinyi Associates said: Investors and analysts are obsessed with the idea of a correction despite their vain efforts to foretell one. Corrections are event-driven and not organic. Of the 6 bull markets since 1982 – with 14 bull-market corrections – this one has had the most
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Bloomberg and Birinyi Associates data show stock buybacks have increased each of the last 4 years and were 6.4 percent of daily trading in the Russell 3000 Index by value through September, exceeding 2007’s level of 4.1 percent and reflect a seven-year decline in equity volume. Birinyi
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Laszlo Birinyi at Birinyi Associates said the S&P 500 Index has a 51 percent chance of rising to 1,820 by February 2014 and a 75 percent chance by April 2014. David Einhorn at Greenlight Re said he has become more conservatively positioned, and continues to be short
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Higher debt costs will reduce buybacks and dividend increases. Borrowing costs for S&P 500 companies fell to 1.4 percent of sales the last 12 months, a record low in 11 years of data. Corporate bond yields are increasing the most since 2009 and are at 4.3 percent
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Corporate creditworthiness in the US is deteriorating at the fastest pace since 2009 with earnings growth slowing as yields rise from record lows. Moody’s said the ratio of upgrades to downgrades fell to 0.89 times in the first 5 months of the year after reaching a post-crisis
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: 10-year Treasuries yield 2.61 percent versus the S&P 500 aggregate earnings yield of 6.4 percent – more than double the average spread of 1.9 points since 2000. Investors are avoiding longer-term Treasuries, concerned that returns will be depressed for years, and money managers foresee the end of a rally that
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Shares of discount brokers are gaining the most since 2003 relative to the S&P 500, a sign that small investors are joining the 4-year bull market. Discount broker stocks beat the market by at least this much in 1997, 1999, 2003 and 2009, years in which the S&P 500
READ MORE... →