Credit Peter Thiel, Blackrock’s deputy chief investment officer for fundamental fixed income, for providing an honest assessment of the outlook for fixed income. “Overall returns of the market will continue to be negative as monetary policy shifts,” he said. So one of the biggest bond investors in the world has an appropriately cautious outlook on total return. Not […]
Fed Chairman Bernanke’s press conference on Wednesday was more interesting than usual. The decision not to “taper” (never a word the Fed has actually used) caught market participants by surprise. The Fed will continue to buy $85 billion of bonds every month until further notice. Perhaps the low interest rate bias of the presumptive Chairman […]
In my new book, Bonds Are Not Forever; The Crisis Facing Fixed Income Investors, I make the case that some big trends in the U.S. economy and Finance began shifting following the financial crisis of 2008, the consequences of which will include interest rates insufficient to compensate bond investors for inflation and taxes (hence the […]
In recent weeks I’ve heard quite a few people comment that they’re looking for “rising rate strategies”. It’s a seductive concept; interest rates are almost assuredly headed higher. The debate about tapering rages on, and clearly the bull market in bonds is over. Serial Quantitative Easing will transform to the Fed’s exit strategy from its […]
http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/2652189553001/time-to-dump-bonds/?playlist_id=1071839331001
I’d never heard of Keith McCullough until today when we noticed that Kinder Morgan (KMI), a stock we own, was down 4%. MLPs are weak but KMI and its cousins KMP and KMR are certainly leading the way. The driver appears to be a bearish report on Kinder Morgan to be released to clients of […]
In writing this month’s letter (just published earlier today) I researched the source of the quote, “If you torture the data long enough, it will always confess.” It was attributed to Ronald Coase, listed on Wikipedia as “Born 1911”. Because his dates did not include an end date for his life, it somewhat improbably suggested […]
In what will hopefully become the new normal for websites, the Huffington Post last week announced they would no longer be allowing anonymous comments on their website. This is a completely sensible move and one that will add civility (their main objective) as well as raise the quality of comments that are made. How is anyone […]
I was struck by an article today on how much Japan will spend next year servicing its debt. In its next fiscal year the Japanese Ministry of Finance (MOF) expects to spend ¥25.3 Trillion on interest. That’s about $260 Billion, or just over 4% of its GDP. By contrast, the U.S. spends just over 2% […]
In recent weeks much has been written and said about who President Obama should select as the next Fed Chairman. Supporters of Larry Summers and Janet Yellen are said to be each pressing the case for their candidate from behind the scenes. For a position that is supposed to float above politics, it is surprisingly political. So […]
