Salient to Investors: Jim Rogers says: The US economy is poised for a major crash. Do not trust any of the positive news coming from any world government. Everybody is printing money but it is artificial, has never been good for anybody and cannot continue. We are in a fool’s paradise
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Correlation between the Euro Stoxx 50 Index and the MSCI All-Country World Index has fallen to the lowest level since 2008. The Euro Stoxx 50 trades at 10.9 times estimated earnings versus 13.7 for the S&P 500 and 14.8 for the MSCI Asia Pacific Index. Trevor Greetham at Fidelity Worldwide is underweight
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Hedge funds et al reduced net-long positions in gold futures and options by 40 percent last week, the biggest drop since July 31, 2007. Commodity bets across 18 US raw materials tumbled to the lowest since December 2011. Global holdings of gold ETPs fell by the most since August 2011. James Dailey at
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: William D. Cohan writes: Hedge-fund managers et al are able to manipulate the market with impunity and make millions. Daniel Loeb’s selling of a big chunk of Herbalife at a price far below what he told investors it was worth is concerning, and taking unfair advantage of
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The financial foundation of leading-edge boomers is stronger in the aggregate than commonly assumed, and is likely to improve in coming years. A study by Alan Gustman at Dartmouth, Thomas Steinmeier at Texas Tech and Nahid Tabatabai at Dartmouth found that the inflation–adjusted wealth of people aged
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Lee Topley at Unified Trust said 401(k)s were first introduced in the late 1970s as supplements to defined benefit pensions, when companies could easily to meet obligations through low-risk bonds with double-digit interest rates. After interest rates fell 401(k) plans grew as more companies decided that pensions
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Daragh Maher at HSBC said Moody’s downgrade was not unexpected, and the drop in the pound in 2013 is small when framed in the context of a longer time-frame, so further falls would not represent an overshoot. Maher said the comfort expressed by the gilt market is largely built
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Moody’s said the U.K.’s high and rising debt burden means deterioration in the government’s balance sheet is unlikely to be reversed before 2016, and while the U.K. has considerable structural economic strengths, expected slow growth of the global economy and the reduced speed of debt reduction in the
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Keith Chen at Yale says: The grammar of the language we speak affects both our finances and our health. If you speak English you are likely to save less for your old age, smoke more and get less exercise than if you speak a language like Mandarin,
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: A paper written by Frederic Mishkin at Columbia University, David Greenlaw at Morgan Stanley, James D. Hamilton at the University of California in San Diego, and Peter Hooper at Deutsche Bank Securities said: The Fed’s hold on policy may weaken should possible losses on its balance sheet coincide with high US budget
READ MORE... →