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By Kristina Hooper, Chief Global Market Strategist Weekly Market Compass: When central banks intervene, investors may need to rethink accepted risk/reward profiles Back when I was in high school, I worked as a lifeguard. I thought it would be a great job, with an opportunity to...
One might define absurdity as the quality or state of being ridiculous. Or one can glance at the global quantity of negative-yielding debt. The total? Nearly $14 trillion. Holding a bond to maturity that pays a negative return is insane. Wouldn’t risk-averse folks prefer a 0% return...
Raising resilience is one of our three investment themes for the remainder of 2019 and beyond. The ability of a portfolio to withstand a variety of adverse conditions is crucial, particularly in a time of elevated macro uncertainty. Bonds' role as ballast in portfolios is still meaningful ev...
By Darren Williams Global markets have taken heart from a truce in the trade war and signs of yet more monetary-policy stimulus. Easy money may well give a short-term lift to asset prices, but longer-term prospects look more challenging, especially for Europe. We see two snags with the l...
The Fed has some reasons for cutting interest rates at its meeting July 31, or subsequently if the US economy weakens. (And there are some good arguments on the other side as well, if growth remains as strong as it has been over the last year). But I find less persuasive one argument for easin...
The short answer is no. So why does the WSJ suggest otherwise? "One reason the Federal Reserve is likely to cut interest rates this week is that inflation is running below its 2% target. New research shows why getting it higher has proved so difficult: many of the prices consumers pa...
Transcript Drivers of Gold in 2019 We've seen a significant shift in Fed [U.S. Federal Reserve] policies over the course of 2019. Remember, back in December the Fed was raising rates. This year, they have become more dovish, and at the last FOMC [Federal Open Market Committee] meeti...
The Federal Reserve is not an intelligence: it does not think. Individual members of the Federal Open Market Committee, however, do think. And the center of gravity of their individual thoughts now runs something like this: 1980-1985 was a disaster: 3 x 6 x 0.5 = 9%-point-years of lost jobs...
Hooray! We did it folks. We raised the debt ceiling again and averted a self imposed default on US government debt. And to celebrate this joyous occasion I wanted to write my 3,589th article explaining some of the never-ending misconceptions about government debt and borrowing. And to do that ...
Once upon a time, there was a time, believe it or not, when a country, or a company's, financial condition determined the interest rate, and the yield, of the borrowing entity. Ratings also came into play and were also a significant determining factor. As to the Fed, and the other central bank...