Salient to Investors: William D. Cohan writes: Mary Jo White’s SEC is trying to make Fabrice “Fabulous Fab” Tourre the poster child for the financial crisis of 2008. This could not be further from the truth. A low-level vice-president such as Tourre has only one responsibility: to do what he is told
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: China understands that its economy needs to slow down. Too much money is flowing into unproductive investments with local officials often to blame. Its effort to engineer a soft landing is laudable and long overdue, but unless it pushes ahead with political as well as market reforms, surrenders
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Rightmove said UK home prices will climb 4 percent in 2013 as sellers raised asking prices for a seventh month to a record in July. Miles Shipside at Rightmove said a combination of apparent economic stability internationally and some signs of an economic upturn nationally mean more home movers are willing and able to increase
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Columbia Management Investment Advisers says the term premium on Treasuries reached 0.46 percent this month, versus the 0.40 percent average in the decade before the 2007 financial crisis minus 0.5 percent as recently as May. Bond bulls say the highest inflation-adjusted yields since March 2011, the slowest pace of increases
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Gary Shilling writes: The fog remains thick, so reducing long positions in Treasury bonds and Japanese stocks and cut yen shorts, euro shorts and dollar long positions. Maintaining long positions in US defensive stocks like utilities and health care. Increased short position in junk bonds and initiated
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Fareed Zakaria said: Pakistan is full of Islamic radicals, nuclear weapons, ambitious generals, and corrupt politicians but things are changing. For the first time in its history, an elected government completed a 5-year term, giving way to a new set of democratically elected leaders. Pakistan’s demographics are vibrant. A third
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Big banks claim a safer financial system would be bad for the economy because tougher banking rules will squeeze their lending and hold back investment. Markets disagree. On July 9, the day regulators published their proposal, the S&P 500 Index rose 11 points and the 10-yr US T-note held steady. On
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Brad Hintz at Sanford C. Bernstein said rising rates will affect mortgages, and that’s negative for the banking group, while trading revenues look good across the board. Read the full article at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-12/jpmorgan-profit-rises-31-on-trading-beats-estimates.html Click here to receive free and immediate email alerts of the latest forecasts.
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Orders for capital goods excluding aircraft and military equipment increased in May, a third consecutive advance and the longest streak since October 2011. The Business Roundtable’s quarterly outlook index rose in Q2 to the highest in a year. Yelena Shulyatyeva at BNP Paribas said investment will pick up
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Dan Denbow at USAA Precious Metals & Minerals Fund said Bernanke’s comments put positive feeling back into gold and all commodities. Standard Chartered said the cost of borrowing gold reached a 4 1/2-year high in London last week, and may be a bullish – gold may rally above $1,400
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