Salient to Investors: Bloomberg survey of analysts shows they are most bullish on stocks farthest from their highs – banks. Financial institutions remain 58 percent below the record of February 2007 while analysts raised estimates for profit growth to 21 percent for Q3 and 32 percent for Q4 on signs of a housing recovery. Revenue
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Lender Processing Services report home loans were repaid in August at a pace that would erase 25 percent of the debt in a year. Herb Blecher at LPS Applied Analytics said the interest rate environment is favorable to get a new loan even for those who refinanced recently. Home sales increased
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Prices to buy and rent houses and apartments in Rio’s top neighborhoods have risen six-fold in the past decade – as expensive as New York and Paris. On discovery of vast deep-water oil deposits in 2008; on hosting the 2016 Olympic Games; on a surge in world demand for Brazil’s commodities. The
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Leslie Chua at Deutsche Bank says: Retail real estate and logistics facilities in Southeast Asian cities, including Bangkok, Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur, are attractive and office markets in Sydney and Melbourne are attractive because of a lack of supply. Investors are caught between a rock and a hard place – the need to
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: More than a million of the college graduate class of 2008 have gone back home. The number of 26-year-olds living with parents is up 46 percent since 2007: a quarter of American adults between the ages of 18 and 30 now live with parents. Read the full article at
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: 16 of the 20 cities in the Case-Shiller index showed a year-over-year advance. Karl Case at Wellesley College says US home prices have bottomed but are unlikely to come roaring back, hindered by tight lending standards, slow economic growth and a limited supply of properties on the market. Case cites problems in
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The S&P/Case-Shiller index of property values in 20 cities had its biggest 12-month advance since August 2010. Millan Mulraine at TD Securities says housing has made an important turn that is being sustained. August saw the strongest pace of single-family starts in more than two years, while purchases of previously-owned
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index at a four-month high in September, Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan preliminary sentiment index at second highest level in five years – due in part to rising stocks and property values. The Conference Board’s index decreased in August from in July, the biggest drop in 10 months. Andrew
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Since 1926, intermediate US government bonds earned about 2.5% above inflation, stocks about 7% above inflation. Currently TIPS yield negative 0.5%. Assuming stocks continue to outperform bonds by 4.5%, then future real returns on stocks will only be 4%, and on a 60-40 balanced portfolio will only be 2.5%. Therefore, central
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Toru Higuchi at Japan’s Teachers’ Mutual Aid Co- operative Society will start investing in REITs and hedge funds. Japan’s has the world’s second-largest retirement pool, after the U.S., with only 6 percent in alternative assets versus 25 percent in the U.S. and 24 percent in Australia. Read the full article at
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