Salient to Investors: The Nikkei 225 is poised to gain 23 percent in 2012, its biggest annual gain since 2005, while the Topix is headed for an 18 percent increase. The Topix trades at book value versus 2.1 times book for the S&P 500. Juichi Wako at Nomura says we’ve entered a positive cycle
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: US government securities have returned 2 percent in 2012 versus 17 percent for the MSCI All-Country World Index including reinvested dividends. Hiroki Shimazu at SMBC Nikko Securities expects investors to shift money from the bond market to the stock market in 2013 as the economy becomes much stronger. Economists expect 10-yr yields to rise
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Global M & A in Q4 rose to the highest level since Q3 2008. Gene Sykes at Goldman Sachs said the pickup may extend into 2013 once the fiscal cliff and euro crises find a solution, with driven by continuing consolidation in natural resources, industrials, technology and financial services. Corporations sit
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Corporate profits are at all time high of almost 12 percent of GDP versus real wages at a record low of almost 2%. Companies have almost $4 trillion in cash, or 13.6% of total assets. Watch the video at http://www.bloomberg.com/video/are-we-facing-a-permanent-decline-in-real-wages-rskODOU8Tzm4u811JZzHQg.html Click here to receive free email alerts of articles as soon as
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Foreign investors poured a record $7.36 billion into Mexican debt securities in 2012 to take advantage of economic growth that is four times Brazil’s and yields that are still triple those for US Treasuries. Luis de la Cerda at Afore Sura said foreigners won’t leave the bonds and are here
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Americans have missed $200 billion of stock gains by draining money from the market in the past 4 years. Since the bull market began in March 2009, the proportion of retirement funds in stocks fell 0.5 percent versus the average rise of 8.2 percent in rallies since 1990. ICI
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Manish Singh at Crossbridge Capital said the broad expectation is there will be no disaster over the fiscal cliff, and investors are getting excited about Japan again. Read the full article at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-21/european-stocks-post-fifth-weekly-gain-sbm-shares-surge.html. Click here to receive free email alerts of articles as soon as they are posted.
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The number of people sued by the SEC or charged with insider trading by the Justice Department has more than doubled since 2008 – 22 percent involving health-care stocks. Bankers, lawyers, accountants, doctors, traders, analysts, hedge-fund managers, company chiefs, pharmaceutical executives and movie producers, lovers, neighbors, classmates
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Brian Frank at Frank Capital Partners writes: Value stocks are driven more by actual cash-flows than by optimistic future projections, and therefore are less prone to deeply disappointing investors with “lower-than-expected” forecasts. Growth and momentum stocks drove 2012 stock market performance and have probably come too far too fast,
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Brokers and dealers cut their inventory of US muni bonds in Q3 to the least since Q1 2004. Investor demand for munis has faltered. Investors are looking to unload more than $1 billion of the debt, the most in two years. David Manges at BNY Mellon Capital Market said investors are
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