Research & News
Daily Comment (September 26, 2016)
by Bill O’Grady and Kaisa Stucke [Posted: 9:30 AM EDT] It was a quiet weekend. The only major news of note was that Jeremy Corbyn was elected as the leader of the Labour Party by nearly 62% of party members.[1] Most political pundits are predicting the Labour Party is doomed to the political wilderness until it… Read More »
Asset Allocation Weekly (September 23, 2016)
by Asset Allocation Committee Profit margins are off their highs but have started to improve. This chart takes total S&P 500 operating earnings as a percentage of GDP. Excluding the financial crisis, operating earnings have been running between 5% and 6% of GDP for most of the past decade and a half. In the middle of… Read More »
Daily Comment (September 23, 2016)
by Bill O’Grady and Kaisa Stucke [Posted: 9:30 AM EDT] This morning’s big news comes from OPEC, where Reuters is reporting that Saudi Arabia offered a production cut if Iran would freeze production. We do not know how much the kingdom has offered to reduce its output, but Iran did tell Russian media that it would… Read More »
Daily Comment (September 22, 2016)
by Bill O’Grady and Kaisa Stucke [Posted: 9:30 AM EDT] As expected, the Fed did not raise rates yesterday. Risk markets rallied following the release and are higher again this morning as investors focus on the more dovish aspects of the release. A key sentence was added to the FOMC statement, which read, “The Committee judges that… Read More »
Daily Comment (September 21, 2016)
by Bill O’Grady and Kaisa Stucke [Posted: 9:30 AM EDT] Equity markets are generally higher following the BOJ release. The BOJ did not do anything too radical—no helicopter money or foreign bond purchases. But, there were some changes. The focus of policy will shift to the yield curve as the 10-year JGB will be pegged at… Read More »
Daily Comment (September 20, 2016)
by Bill O’Grady and Kaisa Stucke [Posted: 9:30 AM EDT] Given the large amount of news from the weekend, there were a couple of items that we wanted to mention but, for brevity, waited until today. First, the Bank of International Settlements released its table of early warning indicators for banking system stress. The key data… Read More »
Weekly Geopolitical Report – Reflections on Terrorism (September 19, 2016)
by Bill O’Grady Fifteen years ago, al Qaeda terrorists used commercial airplanes to attack the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. Another aircraft crashed in rural Pennsylvania; it was believed to be en route for another attack but passengers on the plane prevented the terrorists from achieving their goal. The events… Read More »
Daily Comment (September 19, 2016)
by Bill O’Grady and Kaisa Stucke [Posted: 9:30 AM EDT] It was a very busy weekend for news. Let’s take a look: Terrorist attacks: There were a couple of bomb explosions over the weekend along with a number of unexploded devices found in the Greater New York area. The story is evolving but security officials have… Read More »