Salient to Investors: Bengt Hansson at the Swedish National Board of Housing, Building and Planning said: The Swedish housing market is dangerously overvalued – house prices were 25 percent above fair market value in October, apartments even more overvalued. Oceans of easy credit have eroded the Lutheran tradition of always
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Guy Cecala at Inside Mortgage Finance said jumbo loans, mostly adjustable but also fixed-rate, increased by 34 percent in the first 9 months of 2013. Greg McBride at Bankrate said cash-rich banks, including Wells Fargo and Bank of America are using ARMs to hedge the loans’ longer-term
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: International regulators are concerned that record sales of high-yield payment-in-kind bonds will cause losses for investors when central banks tighten monetary policy. PIK bond sales more than doubled in 2013 from 2012. BIS said 30 percent of issuers before the 2008 financial crisis have since defaulted. BIS
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Bank of America Merrill Lynch index data show the extra yield investors demand to own corporates instead of similar-maturity Treasuries has narrowed 31 basis points this year to 200 basis points, the lowest since October 2007. ICI data shows fund managers favoring corporate debt over government-backed securities
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Investors cut holdings in gold ETPs every month this year, erasing $69.4 billion. Hedge funds et al are the least-bullish since June 2007. John Paulson told clients last month that he personally would not invest more money in his gold fund. Goldman Sachs forecast prices will drop
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Bill Gross at Pimco said: Payroll growth in November signals at least a 50 percent chance the Fed will taper in December as it clearly wants out, but must be careful given the tepid growth of 2 percent. The median analyst predicts the Fed will taper to
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Bill Luby at Luby Asset Mgmt said people are back to pricing in no big surprises until the beginning of 2014. The median economist expects the Fed to wait until March to taper. Eric Augustyn at Wells Fargo Private Bank said tapering will be very gradual and
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Paul Montaquila at Bank of the West said the jobs number was expected but not a blockbuster number, and the steady diet of better numbers are not enough to give the market the clarity they want. Sean Simko at SEI Investments said the market was pricing in
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Jim Rogers writes: Higher and higher debt and money printing is just making the situation worse. We have to pay the price someday for 50 to 60 years of excesses in America. The longer we delay the day of reckoning, the worse it will be. Read the full
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Nine of every 10 stocks in the S&P 500 are set to end the year in positive territory. Only 2 in 5 US bond funds have broken even for investors. Almost anything associated with gold has lost money. The best performing US large-cap stock is Fannie Mae,
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