Salient to Investors: Todd Salamone at Schaeffer’s Investment Research said the Fed raising rates sooner than expected is still a big ‘if.’ The S&P 500 has not had a decline of 10 percent in almost 3 years and trades at 17.8 times reported earnings, near the highest level since 2010.
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Few businesses are large enough to merit Warren Buffett’s attention. Berkshire Hathaway spent a third of the total from a year earlier on equities in half1 2014, while sales of stock more than doubled. Buffett dislikes paying a dividend and rarely buys back shares. David Rolfe at Wedgewood Partners said Buffett’s list
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Pundits calling for a huge decline in equities are either the absolutely certain types, who have stuck to their prediction for years, and the less media-savvy academics and heads of research at big investment firms who see a decline but after the market goes higher. The last
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Flows into emerging-market ETFs have turned positive for the year, reversing outflows in the first 2 1/2 months of 2014. The most inflows in 2014 have gone to India-focused ETFs. Investors have withdrawn $1.5 billion from China-targeted ETPs over concern over economic imbalances there. The RSI of the BlackRock ETF
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: David Kostin, Kathy Matsui, Peter Oppenheimer et al at Goldman Sachs lowered their rating on stocks to neutral and corporate credit to underweight on belief that global equities and bonds may drop in the next 3 months, and stocks may temporarily fall, as rising inflation boosts government bonds and
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Russ Koesterich at BlackRock said volatility is very low because monetary conditions are easy but when investors see the US and UK central banks tighten then we will get a long-awaited rise to normal levels, but not to those of 2008 with the VIX at 90. Pimco expects a new
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The Russell 2000 VIX is up almost 11 percent in 2014 versus a 6.6 percent drop in the VIX and at its highest level since 2006 relative to the VIX. Russell Rhoads at CBOE’s Options Institute said the premium indicates we would get a bigger pullback in small-caps than large-caps in a market
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Jeremy Grantham said: The stock market is expensive and headed for a bubble at S&P 500 above 2250, and offers paltry returns for years to come. Expect an explosion of M&As to record numbers due to cheaper debt in this cycle, profit margins that will remain high, a still young
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Over 33% of a Bloomberg poll of international investors say the euro economy is in its worst shape in more than a year and in danger of dropping into deflation, and the ECB is not doing enough to help. Cyril Blaise at Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria said
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Todd Lowenstein at Highmark Capital Mgmt said people are selling out of fear in a market that is really acute to geopolitical risk, given current valuations. John Canally at LPL Financial said markets have to determine if this is an escalation of the conflict. 60 percent of
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