Blog Archives

Election Aftermath Fiscal Data What Will Be the Bottom Line?

Fiscal Policy

For the last few years, the Fed has been telegraphing that monetary policy cannot do all of the heavy lifting and that fiscal policy had to play a role as well. The market seemed to agree with the Fed and is also the reason that the market very rarely believed the Fed’s dot plot of the future path of interest rates.

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What Were Trump Voters Really Looking For?

Trump Voters

With the midterm elections kicking into high gear and political rhetoric heating up and true believers huddling in their echo chambers and cocoons, I thought it would be interesting to look at some research carried out with regard to the 2016 presidential election and some of the surprising findings.

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Man Up Revisited - Winners Like Apple and Amazon

Apple Amazon.com

In an earlier blog, I discussed a fascinating study that asked whether stocks outperformed T-Bills. Surprisingly, the answer was that most stocks do not and the bulk of stock market returns have come from an incredibly small number of companies that have produced the estimated $32 trillion in wealth (returns in excess of T-Bills) between 1926 and 2015.

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What You See Is What You Get? LIBOR & The Flat Yield Curve

Under most economic environments longer-term debt instruments yield more than shorter ones. This is the case in order to compensate investors for risks related to purchasing power eroding and more uncertainty and volatility that can increase the probability of default (outside Treasuries). In addition, our banking system is based on banks accessing short-term deposits and being able to make longer-term loans and investments which necessitates longer rates being higher than shorter ones so banks can be profitable.

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Resistance is The Enemy of Creativity

Shortly after publishing my book I was in New York City and did a brief interview with Gregg Greenberg from TheStreet.com which was quite fun and then I had a meeting with investment legend Howard Marks which was such a treat. He was kind enough to write a testimonial for the book and made the time to let me thank him personally.

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Quantum Phases & Locking Rate

Quantum Phases

The last few weeks have been a good representation as to why I have an aversion to fixed-rate loans when doing a refinance or an acquisition. Assuming fixed rate loans from sellers when acquiring properties, however, is a different story and worthy of its own write up so I won’t address the distinctions here.

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10-year Treasury Note & Argentina's 40% Interest Rate - An Interesting Week

10-year Treasury note

What a difference one week makes. Last week I was concerned that the 10-year Treasury note yield had breached its previous cycle peak. I used some questionable, but fancy statistical analysis to justify that the peak I should really be worried about was 3.16% versus the previous cycle peak of 3.04%.

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Trumpling on the Dollar

dollar

Maybe I’m writing about the dollar because I’m traveling abroad soon so it affects my pocketbook. It could also be due to the rather shockingly overt talking down of the dollar by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin in Davos.

Mnuchin in Davos Dollar

“Obviously a weaker dollar is good for us as it relates to trade and opportunities,”

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Is the Fed Using the Right Measure? Relative vs. Absolute

measure

Like many other investors I am a big fan of Seeking Alpha as it is a terrific resource to research companies, markets, and to get a wide variety views regarding important economic, societal, and business trends. One of the most prolific writers there who I follow is Jeffrey Snider.

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Our Rapidly Aging World - From Japan to India to America

AgingOne of the principal reasons I have been in the camp of interest rates remaining low for many years to come relates to demographics. I have always thought that Japan is the canary in the coal mine in terms of being on the leading edge of a rapidly aging society and how this filters through to lower interest rates.

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