Salient to Investors: Foreclosure auctions surged last month, signaling lenders are preparing to sell a backlog of distressed properties amid rising home prices. RealtyTrac said total US foreclosure filings are the lowest since December 2006. S&P/Case-Shiller report prices for single-family homes in the Miami metro area climbed 13 percent in April from a year earlier,
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: William Pesek writes: Thailand has 5.3 percent growth, a young and expanding population, and a surprising level of political stability. Yet Thailand has subsidized rice prices, provided handouts to car buyers and favored mega projects that will enrich the politically connected – all at the expense of long-term
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Matthew C. Klein writes: Hedge funds et al can now solicit the public for capital by advertising, a welcome development. It is easy to avoid scoundrels by sticking to index funds. Only the greedy get fleeced by offers that are too good to be true. Most finance
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Dennis Gartman writes: Bearish on natural gas because its supply is huge and rising as we find more every single day through fracking. Will be very difficult for natural gas to rise above $4 – if it does, it will will quickly be hedged away. Read the full
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Jim O’Neill writes: Too much of the world’s trade and finance is conducted in dollars. The exorbitant privilege has lasted too long. It is time one or two of the emerging-market governments did something about the US’s ability to borrow in its own currency – an advantage the rest
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Clive Crook writes: The global economic recovery is hardly worthy of the name – the IMF again reduced its growth forecasts. Recessions involving financial crashes are harder to recover from than ordinary downturns. The failure of international cooperation is most egregious in the EU, where the EU core
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Hamilton “Tony” James of Blackstone Group said stocks were a fool’s game compared with alternative investments. and investing in alternatives makes sense even when they underperform. James said the return from these idiosyncratic investments are very uncorrelated to the broader markets, so portfolio volatility falls. Hedge funds have been
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Mansoor Mohi-uddin at UBS said the euro and pound will weaken to $1.20 and the pound will fall to $1.41, more than 3-year lows against the dollar, by year-end 2013 as the commitment by the ECB and the BoE to keep interest rates low for extended periods. Mohi-uddin said policy
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: JPMorgan Chase said REITs may have needed to sell about $30 billion of government-backed mortgage securities in just one week last month to maintain the amount of borrowing relative to their net worth. Bryan Whalen at TCW said REITs have been one of, if not the biggest contributors
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Jim Rogers writes: The most under appreciated commodity story is probably whatever is down the most and where the most bears are. Read the full article at http://www.jimrogers.info/ Click here to receive free and immediate email alerts of the latest forecasts.
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