Research & News
Weekly Geopolitical Report – The Mid-Year Geopolitical Outlook (July 10, 2017)
by Bill O’Grady As is our custom, we update our geopolitical outlook for the remainder of the year as the first half comes to a close. This report is less a series of predictions as it is a list of potential geopolitical issues that we believe will dominate the international landscape for the rest of the… Read More »
Daily Comment (July 10, 2017)
by Bill O’Grady and Thomas Wash [Posted: 9:30 AM EDT] Happy Monday! It’s officially mid-summer as baseball’s All-Star Game will be held tomorrow. Global markets are rather quiet this morning. Here are the headlines: G-20: The U.S. is becoming steadily isolated in the world as per the design of the Trump administration (and, to be fair,… Read More »
Asset Allocation Weekly (July 7, 2017)
by Asset Allocation Committee One of the relationships we persistently monitor is the expectations of 10-year Treasury yields compared to the actual level of yields. To do this, at the beginning of each year, we plot the rate forecasts from the Philadelphia FRB’s Professional Forecaster Survey. The record of the forecasters has not been stellar. The… Read More »
Daily Comment (July 7, 2017)
by Bill O’Grady and Thomas Wash [Posted: 9:30 AM EDT] Happy employment day! The employment data is covered in detail below but the snapshot of the data is supportive. Payrolls rose 222k compared to forecasts of 178k; we also saw a 47k upward revision, making the report robust. The unemployment rate came in at 4.4% versus… Read More »
Daily Comment (July 6, 2017)
by Bill O’Grady and Thomas Wash [Posted: 9:30 AM EDT] It’s a fairly quiet morning, typical of mid-summer. Here are the issues we are watching: Fed minutes: Most of the media recaps focused on the reduction of the balance sheet. As we have noted in the past, in theory, this action shouldn’t be a big deal. … Read More »
Daily Comment (July 5, 2017)
by Bill O’Grady and Thomas Wash [Posted: 9:30 AM EDT] Back to work! Here are the items we are following this morning: North Korea’s ICBM: Over the holiday, North Korea launched an ICBM that is at least capable of reaching Hawaii and Alaska and could hit much of Asia, along with northern Australia. Although there is… Read More »
Asset Allocation Weekly (June 30, 2017)
by Asset Allocation Committee For equity investors, there is always a concern about the major market declines; being able to reduce market exposure prior to crashes like the ones in 2000 or 2008 is always desirable. Although large declines have occurred outside of economic recessions, they have become increasingly rare. The last major market pullback absent… Read More »
Daily Comment (June 30, 2017)
by Bill O’Grady, Kaisa Stucke, and Thomas Wash [Posted: 9:30 AM EDT] N.B. Due to the upcoming Independence Day holiday, the next issue of the Daily Comment will be published on July 5th. We want to wish you a happy and safe holiday! We expect a quiet trade today; it’s a summer Friday, there’s a holiday… Read More »
Daily Comment (June 29, 2017)
by Bill O’Grady, Kaisa Stucke, and Thomas Wash [Posted: 9:30 AM EDT] Here are some of the items we are tracking this morning: Fed stress tests give banks a green light: The banks performed well on the Federal Reserve stress tests, opening the sector to increasing dividends and stock buybacks. Bank stocks lifted the broader indices… Read More »
Daily Comment (June 28, 2017)
by Bill O’Grady, Kaisa Stucke, and Thomas Wash [Posted: 9:30 AM EDT] There was quite a bit of news from yesterday through this morning: ECB tells market “you misunderstand”: Yesterday, ECB President Draghi gave a speech that was taken to suggest that tapering was going to occur because the Eurozone economy is doing better. The EUR… Read More »