Salient to Investors: Chua Hak Bin at Bank of America Merrill Lynch said: Total foreign direct investment into Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand was $128.4 billion in 2103 versus $117.6 billion for China. Rising foreign direct investment into Asean will remain a favorable structural trend over the
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The spread between the 2-yr China sovereign yield and the similar-maturity interest-rate swap, a gauge of financial stress, last week reached the widest in Bloomberg data going back to 2007. George Soros and Bill Gross have drawn parallels between the situation in China and that in the
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Kenneth Heebner at CGM Focus Fund shorted Apple during Q4 2013. Morgan Stanley said institutional ownership of Apple shares has been declining as funds question the company’s ability to increase revenue long-term – the 30 largest stockholders own a record low 30 percent of shares outstanding, versus
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The MBA said New Jersey has surpassed Florida in having the highest share of residential mortgages that are seriously delinquent or in foreclosure, with New York third, whereas hard-hit areas such as Arizona and California have some of the lowest levels after allowing banks to quickly foreclose
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: John Larkin at Stifel Nicolaus said: Railroad stocks are overvalued at 10.9 times enterprise value to EBITD on a trailing 12-month basis versus an average of 9.4 since 1993. The biggest gains are behind them. Their cyclical earnings power will diminish, especially in a mediocre economic environment,
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Hedge funds’ net-long positions of 18 US-traded commodities rose 18 percent last week to the highest since September 2012. Investors tripled the net-long position in arabica coffee this month to the most bullish since May 2011 Barclays said weather is the big driver of commodities. EPFR Global
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Strategas Research Partners said stocks are cheap. Of the respective 15-year average, their value in P/E ratio terms is 95%, in enterprise value to cash flow is 85%, in oil terms is 65%, and in gold terms is 58%. Jason Trennert at Strategas said a number of their
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Convicted felon Sam Antar says stock-picking sets you up as a mark for the unscrupulous because investors live on hope and it is the criminal’s job to take advantage of that hope. Antar said criminals are as short-sighted, if not more so, as the rest of us –
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: TS Eliot called TV “a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome”. Ethan Kross et al at the University of Michigan and the University of Leuven found that Facebook use correlated with
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Jim O’Neill said: We are closer to a buying opportunity in emerging-market stocks than to joining in the panic. While some places in the emerging world have real problems, to herald an emerging-market crisis is ridiculous. Ukraine, Thailand, Argentina and Turkey have some serious issues. The Fed decision
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