by Dino

The macroeconomic outlook in the US is widely recognized to be cloudy. Despite bazooka-power stimulus, the economy has not rebounded as strongly as it usually does after a recession, and most of the stimulus is behind us.  Even Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke acknowledged this much in his now-famous “unusually uncertain” semiannual testimony to Congress [...]

by James

For all the jubilation, markets proved relatively quiet last week, in part thanks to a bit of steam-letting in Friday trading. The S&P 500 has risen in eight of the last ten sessions – last week it was driven by stellar earnings from some of the big hitters, most notably JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and [...]

by James

Risk remained a negative concept last week, as investors stuck to aversion trades in all major markets. China was the only market that managed to rise, and even there the A-shares only climbed by 0.8%. The global selling was led by commodities. WTI Oil fell 8.75%, closing below the $60/bbl, on a combination of bearish [...]

by Dino

Buy stocks! Stocks are cheap. Buy now! Stocks for the long run. Equity advertising is a huge industry. Much larger than bond advertising, or hedge fund advertising. How come? Sure, there are also a lot of people advertising cars, or running shoes, or perfumes. The funny thing is, these people would like to sell you [...]

by James

This week we again visit several of the indicators that we have been tracking to understand the progress of the global economy. The signs are very mixed, and the overall forward visibility has not improved. But, there are still some tentative signs of hope. At the global level, there are hopes that we have stabilised, [...]

by Dino

You’ve heard it many times this month (indeed, this year See our February 23 post by the same title as this one): stocks are cheap. This is due to the naive and dangerous belief that if stocks are down some 10% from the previous high (or the previous week, as it were) they must be [...]

by James

It is not usually a good idea to leave it to the politicians to fix things. Congress cannot really be blamed for its failure to pass the US Emergency Economic Stabilisation Act, but this weekend it has been a real struggle to reach the kind of consensus needed to bring global stability. Has enough been [...]

by James

What a day on the market. While the MM Team found the four plus hours of Congressional hearings exceptionally dull, the market danced to a different tune. Equities took a pummelling at the start and fought there way back, only to get slapped down again at the end. I am surprised that the market didn’t [...]