Salient to Investors: Individual investors have added $100 billion to equity mutual funds and ETFs in the past year, 10 times more than the previous 12 months, and vs. outflows of $300 billion in the 5 years through 2012 and inflows of $102 billion in Q1 2000 just before the tech
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Hedge funds et al are the most bullish on gold since November 2012. Jeffrey Currie at Goldman Sachs expects $1,050 by year-end as the economy improves. Abhishek Chinchalkar at AnandRathi Commodities said prices are a little overstretched technically as funds are overbought, while gold is vulnerable to
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Family-run businesses with aging owners and no successor are increasing in Japan as the population shrinks. Japan has 1 million small businesses with 10 or fewer employees, with people in their 70s as the biggest proportion of the self-employed. Nobuo Tomoda at Tokyo Shoko Research said a
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Fed officials are approaching their goals for full employment and price stability faster than they had forecast. Most FOMC members believe the Fed will not raise its benchmark rate until 2015, with the median forecast calling for 1.13 percent at the end of 2015 and 2.5 percent
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Craig Hodges at Hodges Small Cap Fund said any slump in the market will be temporary and a buying opportunity as there is still a lot of money on the sidelines. Hodges is 10 percent in cash, and likes airlines. Greg Taylor at Aurion Capital Mgmt said
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The median economist predicts GDP will grow 3.1 percent in half2 2014 and 2015 will be the strongest year in a decade. Ethan Harris at Bank of America sees no major headwinds and forecasts 3 percent growth in half2 2014 on fewer government cutbacks, rising auto demand
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Sam Vecht at BlackRock says Russian stocks are very cheap, carry a high dividend yield, and earnings downgrades are absent. BlackRock’s Emerging Europe Trust was 50 percent invested in Russian stocks at the end of May. JPMorgan upgraded Russian stocks in June, The Micex is at 5.6
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Amundi Asset Management, Credit Suisse and Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank expect Hong Kong stocks to struggle as reduced Fed stimulus weighs on developers and banks that comprise over 35 percent of the index. Ayaz Ebrahim at Amundi Asset Mgmt says China is too cheap and is selling
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Geoffrey Dennis at UBS said Brazil’s 7-1 soccer loss to Germany was so crushing that it upends the conventional theory that World Cup defeat would be positive for Brazil’s financial markets because it would cause voters to oust Rousseff, who has sunk the economy into stagflation. Instead,
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: A Bernstein Research study “Do High R&D Spenders in Tech Generate Stock Outperformance?” found: Over 1, 3, 5, and 10-year periods, the companies with the lowest spending on R&D tended to perform the best on Wall Street. Over the past 5 years, stocks in the biggest R&D
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