Salient to Investors: Hedge funds cut bullish wagers on commodities by the most since June, copper holdings fell to an eight-week low, gold wagers are the smallest since September, and oil the lowest in four months. Sales trailed estimates at 59 percent of US companies that released Q3 results through Nov. 2. Rob Haworth at US
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Gary Shilling at A. Gary Shilling & Co writes: Investors’ zeal for yield has: Depressed yields and spreads of below-investment-grade debt versus Treasuries so much that it now takes real skill to default. The global recession will hype defaults even though many low-rated companies have a cushion of safety from
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Asian currencies strengthened for a fifth month on signs of a pickup in China, where industrial output, retail sales and fixed-asset investment gathered pace in September. Tsutomu Soma at Rakuten Securities said funds are flowing into Asia. EPFR Global said emerging-market bond funds attracted $44.2 billion this year through Oct. 24 versus $15.9
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Jim Goff at Janus writes: Only invest money you won’t need for five to 10 years, set it and forget it. Australia has the best such plan with its mandatory retirement fund contributions of 9% of salary – assets now exceed Australian GDP and the Australian stock market. Bad headlines are the
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The S&P 500 is up 14 percent in 2012, beating Treasuries, corporate bonds, commodities, the dollar and equities in Asia and Europe for the first time since 1995. The S&P 500 earnings yield is 6.9 percent versus 2.7 percent on investment-grade US corporate bonds – the spread of 4.2 percent compares
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Hedge funds cut bullish commodity bets to the lowest since July 24 on speculation China and Europe aren’t doing enough to boost growth. Gold bets fell 7 percent, silver fell 5.8 percent. Bill Greiner at Mariner Wealth Advisors said global growth weakening, China growth is pretty weak. Barclays
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Investors have pulled $440 billion from U.S. equity mutual funds since 2008. E.E. Geduld at Cougar Trading says crashes happen when investors become convinced they’ve lost control – the volumes we can now handle are gigantic, but the exit door hasn’t changed in size. Timothy Ghriskey at Solaris Group said
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Investors are growing wary of publicly traded securities as interest rate cuts at central banks helped inject liquidity into markets, bolstering bonds and stocks. Scott Kalb at KLTI Advisors said: Sovereign wealth funds are increasing their allocations to alternatives Institutional investors are focusing on hedge funds and private
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: BlackRock is reducing holdings of speculative-grade munis and buying those rated A to AA as the US faces the fiscal cliff. Laurence Fink at Blackrock said the economy may go into recession next quarter as companies curb hiring. Sean Carney at BlackRock said there’s ample liquidity in the high-yield market as everyone wants it. Peter
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Hedge funds are turning away from a rally in the global stock market for the first time this year. The ratio of bullish to bearish bets is below historical averages. Bulls say gains will rise as managers who have trailed benchmark indexes most of the year buy. Bears
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