Salient to Investors: The IMF predicts G-7 nations will tighten policy in 2014 by the least since they began in 2011 – at half this year’s pace as the average budget shortfall drops to about a quarter of where it was just 3 years ago. Jose Ursua at Goldman Sachs
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Bill Gross at Pimco said: The unprecedented cash added to the financial system by central banks is raising the risk of a slide in global asset prices. Global economies and their artificially priced markets are increasingly at risk, but the unwinding may occur gradually.” The Fed, BoJ,
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Robert Gorman at TD Wealth said: The 3-yr period of sharp underperformance for Canada is coming to a close Dividend stocks will continue to rule but resource stocks will do comparatively better after showing signs of bottoming out. The S&P/TSX Composite Index and the S&P 500 will
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: John Gilbert at General Re-New England Asset Mgmt, a unit of Berkshire Hathaway, said: Fed policy has lifted stocks but has created systemic risk in the world financial system for which they take little responsibility, because what happens outside the US is not their assignment. A slowdown
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The National Bureau of Economic Research found: A robot could replicate Warren Buffett’s stock-picking performance. The ingredients of that robot are 1.6x leverage, which is what Buffett runs at Berkshire Hathaway, and a statistical factor-weighting investment approach that overweights growing, high-payout, profitable companies with low betas. Read
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Mark Matthews at Julius Baer said the sell-off of Thai assets is not over and the protests will weaken Yingluck’s ability to increase investment in the economy – no one is itching to buy this market. Joel Kim at BlackRock said the Thai baht is one of
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Noah Weisberger at Goldman Sachs said: The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index will rise 18 percent to 13,600 by the end of 2014, the biggest gain since a rise of 62 percent in 2009, on prospects the economy will stabilize. Commodities will lag the rally in equities.
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Resistance to hiring will help push S&P 500 Index profit margins above 10 percent next year, the highest ever. The 5-year rally has restored $14 trillion to share prices, yet US payrolls remain 1.5 million below the level in 2008. Michael Holland at Holland & Co said
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Bill O’Neill at UBS Wealth Mgmt said the story is still the combination of easy money policies and expectations of growth into 2014 and that growth is on the horizon. The Investment Companies Institute reports individual investors gave $30 billion to managers in 2013, the first net
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: David Cui at Bank of America said China’s stocks may come under selling pressure within weeks just as surging borrowing costs preceded tumbling markets in 2010-2011, saying the crackdown on lending is different from a tightening in response to strong economic growth, often a positive sign for
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