As the bull market in equities continues to push to new highs, investor emotions tend to take over and it becomes very easy to get complacent with equity investments. In extended bull market runs, as we’ve seen over the last six years, the average investor has a tendency to become…
Piketty may have pushed Putin off the front page for now, but one should never count an autocrat out. Putin’s strength in May is reversing with (1) the Ukrainian army now pushing successfully (though slowly) back on pro-Russian elements in the East and (2) the China-Russia deal not signed before…
Reflecting on June, one has a sense that the world’s economies and markets are starting to differentiate. In the US, there was the nasty GDP downgrade from -1.0% to -2.9% for Q1 but with unemployment flirting with 6% and strong auto and factory news, one wonders if the bulls were…
Upon reflection, August felt as if the differentiation that has marked markets the last few months began to reverse as global macro factors appeared to take precedence, at least since the middle of the month. This is not due to a convergence of economic news (US appears to be slowly…