Salient to Investors: Jonathan Gray at Blackstone said the market is moving much faster than anybody thought possible, and housing is much stronger than people anticipated. Blackstone is buying in Atlanta, Chicago, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Northern and Southern California; Miami, Orlando and Tampa, Florida, through foreclosure auctions and short sales. Anthony Paolone at JPMorgan said the home
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: JPMorgan report that stocks have retraced the pattern from the last two big market rallies and now face a decline in 2013 of over 50%. Nouriel Roubini at NYU says there is a chance of an economic “perfect storm” in 2013 due to a worsening eurozone crisis,
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: John Manley at Wells Fargo Advantage Funds said valuations are far from excessive. Analysts expect S&P 500 Q4 profits to increase 2.9 percent. The VIX has fallen 40 percent over the past 6 sessions, the biggest decline since November 2008. Michael Riesner and Marc Mueller at UBS said the bull
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Thomas Pulley at Fortress Investment plans to buy real estate debt backed by rental apartments, retail space and business hotels in Japan’s metropolitan areas. Pulley says the deleveraging and asset-cleansing process has occurred more at the mid-size than the larger properties. Pulley is underweight offices because the differential between
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture says: Obama has nowhere to go but up in selecting the new Treasury Secretary as Larry Summers and Tim Geithner were asleep at the switch when the crisis occurred and were there to help the banks and not service the taxpayers.
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Quant funds lost 3.4 percent last year versus a loss of 7.9 percent in 2011. Quants made money during the financial crisis when other hedge funds didn’t. BarclayHedge said investors poured $108.2 billion into the pools since the end of 2008 to $266 billion, more than any other type of
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Michael Riesner and Marc Mueller at UBS say the US bull market may rise to 1,570 on the S&P 500 and then end in 2013, followed by a cyclical bear market and drop of up to 30 percent by 2014. They say the S&P 500 long-term bear market that began in
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The 20 stocks with the highest short sales in the S&P 500 rose an average of 5.1 percent in December versus 0.7 percent for the Index, the widest performance gap since January 2012. Equities tend to rally when companies with the most short interest outperform – like in
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Martin Ellis at Halifax expects continuing broad stability in house prices nationally in 2013 and end the year close to where they begin. Nationwide Building Society says UK house prices may decline modestly in 2013. Blerina Uruci at Barclays expects the subdued trend in 2012 to continue in 2013 and then gradually
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Mark Mobius at Templeton Emerging Markets says the Malaysian administration has been very good for the markets and will continue to be so, and is buying more Malaysian shares on the country’s economic growth prospects. Mobius is possibly cutting back on Indonesian banks and Indian natural-resources stocks due to valuations. The Jakarta Finance Index
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