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Market Outlooks
Weekly Macro Update: Why Aren’t Markets Tanking?
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There’s a list of reasons that might make an investor squirm, but there may be change afoot they should watch closely.
Market Outlooks
What small caps might be telling us about the economy and the market
For a big country, we sure have an affinity for little things. Think TV shows: “Tiny House Nation”; sayings: “Big things come in small packages”; and children’s books: “The Little Engine That Could” as being among the more obvious examples of our love of things little or small. It is a love of small things which brings us to the focus of this week’s Weekly Wire, US small cap stocks, and what the asset class might be telling us about the US economy and the US stock market as we approach the second half of 2020.
Market Outlooks
The EM Default Picture: More Nuanced Than Headlines Imply
The coronavirus pandemic is undoubtedly creating short-term and long-term challenges for emerging
markets (EMs). But not all sovereign and corporate issuers can be painted with the same broad brush,
and placing too much weight on overly dire forecasts may result in missed opportunities.
Market Outlooks
Weekly Macro Update: Why June May be the Most Important Month of the Year
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We’ll have a substantially better picture of how quickly global demand may recover.
Market Outlooks
What history will COVID-19 write?
The COVID-19 pandemic has made history in more ways than one, including catalyzing an economic downturn that cost the US more than 20 million jobs and a policy response that saw the Federal Government pass the $2.1 trillion CARES Act, the largest ever US economic rescue package. That said, we don’t think COVID-19 is finished filling up our history books. We think the long-term consequences of the virus could prove much more meaningful than what we have seen to date.
Market Outlooks
The market as a leading indicator…for the market
We frequently write about the stock market as a leading indicator of the real economy. The idea being
the market will anticipate the economic environment to come, rallying in the face of awful economic news and selling off in the face of constructive economic news.
Policy and Regulatory Commentary
How the Federal Reserve is like Spike from Happy Days
As a child of the 70s, I have come to embrace a few, eternal truths: disco should have never died; big collars were a good idea, and the Fonz was the coolest guy who ever lived. Speaking of the Fonz, I am reminded of a Happy Days episode featuring Spike, the Fonz’s nephew, and how that episode and Spike can help us all better understand monetary policy today. Seriously.
Market Outlooks
Weekly Macro Update: The Pandemic & The “Thucydides Trap”
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Recall that when we last left our rivals, they had just struck a partial agreement on rebalancing bilateral trade even as they continued to snarl about the long list of intractable issues that divided them.
Market Outlooks
Weekly Wire: Pick a letter, any letter
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We got our first look at Q1 Gross Domestic Product last week, and as expected, it wasn’t pretty. While the Q1 GDP number is subject to revision, it showed the economy contracted (4.8%) Q to Q.
Market Outlooks
Pick a letter, any letter
If one considers that the coronavirus didn’t hit the US economy hard until mid-March, and that our economy has been shut down since, a recession is a foregone conclusion, with Q2 GDP expected to contract about 30% Q to Q
Market Outlooks
Weekly Wire: How can oil be worth less than nothing?
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They say if you live long enough you really do see everything. Well, last week investors saw something they had never seen before – the price of a barrel of oil going for negative $37, at least based on the May 2020 futures contract on West Texas Intermediate (WTI).
Macroeconomic & Geopolitical
Creative Destruction
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Economist Joseph Schumpeter coined the phrase “creative destruction” to describe the way innovation in the manufacturing process increases productivity while destroying the old way of doing things as a new efficient way is developed.