Salient to Investors: Acadametrics and and LSL Property Services said the the average price of a home in England and Wales increased 3.1 percent from a year earlier. 6 regions posted an increase in annual prices, 4 posted declines, London led gains, rising 9.4 percent. David Brown at LSL Property Services said market
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The dwindling role of bond insurance and yields at four-decade lows is fueling demand for muni analysts. Paul Sorbera at Alliance Consulting said the demand has significantly raised salaries. Jeff Burger at Standish Mellon Asset Mgmt said basis points matter in a low-yield environment. Investors have become more confident buying uninsured or lower-rated debt.
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Federal Reserve Governor Jeremy Stein says: Significant reaching-for-yield behavior in corporate credits are early signs of potentially excessive risk-taking, while not posing a threat to financial stability. A decline in the quality of debt through greater subordination or less use of protective covenants also signal reaching for yield. It
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Mark Freeman at Westwood Holdings said we’ve moved so far so fast that the market is just looking to take something off the table, and needs a positive catalyst to take it higher. Jeff Sica at SICA Wealth Mgmt said there’s concern that Europe will implode and the contagion effect
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Jim Rogers Says: The Age of Wall Street – which drove 25% of the US economy – is over. Tomorrow’s economy will be driven by food, energy, real goods, people who make real things. In 1958 we produced 500 MBAs, we now produce 200,000 every year. More
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Research finds that, among US-based fund managers, a Brazilian-born manager who speaks fluent Portuguese and is familiar with the country’s business culture had better results when investing in Brazilian companies than a German-born manager. Quoc Nguyen at University of Illinois found: US funds that overweight stocks from the local ethnic
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Banco de Mexico Governor Agustin Carstens said: A perfect storm may be forming as risk appetite has returned and the search for yield is in full force: concerns of asset-price bubbles fed by credit booms are starting to appear. Japan is actively pursuing a depreciating real exchange
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: US interest-rate swap levels at their highest in 4 months relative to T-yields suggests investors are seeking refuge in government bonds. Ali Jalai at Scotiabank said it is definitely not time to short Treasuries because thinking that the Fed is going to tighten is just silly because
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Mark Calabria at the Cato Institute said the push for revisiting Dodd-Frank is absolutely driven by a sense that Dodd-Frank did not end too big to fail. Camden Fine at Independent Community Bankers of America said that before the end of 2016 we will get a significant step
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Anshu Jain at Deutsche Bank lauded Germany’s pro-austerity policies and the ECB’s commitment to limitless bond purchases as catalysts for bringing the euro past the acute stage of the crisis. Jain said implied default probabilities in Italy and Spain are as high as 20 percent and still a worry.
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