Salient to Investors: Tom Stringfellow at Frost Investment Advisors expects interest rates to rise sooner than people expect, causing a knee-jerk reaction, but not at a rate that derails this stable environment. Jan Hatzius at Goldman Sachs expects the Fed to raise rates in Q3 2015. The S&P 500 is
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Rotating into defensive industries has been a losing strategy for the third straight year as personal spending, manufacturing and inflation have exceeded analyst forecasts. The median projection says Q2 GDP grew 3.5 percent. Inflows into health-care and utility ETFs exceed $3 billion in 2014 versus $580 million inflows
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Barry Ritholtz writes: The market’s various new highs are bullish. Corrections are normal so should not be feared: since March 2009, we have had 9 corrections from 6-22 percent. Corrections are impossible to forecast because people are terrible at making predictions and we don’t know what the
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Analysts expect earnings to fall this year at Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase et al, but rise 20 percent or more at discount brokers. Chad Morganlander at Stifel, Nicolaus said household investors are getting more confident as their fear thaws out – volatility terrifies retail investors. James Gaul
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Robert Battalio at Notre Dame said: Dark pools have existed forever: shut them down and new forms will arise elsewhere because money managers are too fond of them. Order flow will always have multiple venues to execute on because one size does not fit all. Brokers favor
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Laszlo Birinyi at Birinyi Associates said: Investors and analysts are obsessed with the idea of a correction despite their vain efforts to foretell one. Corrections are event-driven and not organic. Of the 6 bull markets since 1982 – with 14 bull-market corrections – this one has had the most
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: David Weidner writes: Five years into a slow paced economic recovery is good reason to be buying stocks, because rapidly growing economies usually goes belly up as quickly as they rise. The stock market always leads the economy but a 155% rise in the Dow since 2009
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: $19.99 sounds a lot cheaper than $20. The S&P 500 had trouble with the 1,000 level from July 1997 to September 2003, and then following the financial crisis. It took the DJIA from 1968 to 1982 to get comfortable with the 1,000 level. Nicholas Colas at ConvergEx
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Warren Buffett has been shifting toward capital-intensive businesses like energy and transportation, while reducing reliance on insurance operations and stock-picking. He is planning more investment in energy, in part in renewable power, as far as the eye can see. Buffett sees the steady but far from spectacular gains of
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: American short sellers have been hurt for 5 years by the biggest market rally since the Internet bubble. Bearish wagers in the SPDR ETF are near 11 percent of its shares, the highest level since 2012. Bearish wagers against a technology ETF are 67 percent above the
READ MORE... →