In an era of policy-driven capital markets it’s essential to stay in tune with and even anticipate major policy shifts before they are yesterday’s news. The labor force participation rate is one of the key economic data points that will have an impact on Fed policy in the coming quarters.
HFT is an algorithmic (computer based) trading approach that tries to make a very small profit over an extremely short period of time. Most HFT trading is done by market participants trying to skim fractions of pennies off of millions of transactions each and every day.
In this month’s Monthly Macro piece we look at green shoots in the US, the changing attitude towards austerity in Europe, the pending questions surrounding China’s economy and the latest round of monetary madness courtesy of the Bank of Japan.
Coach is a brand best known here in the US for their leather accessories. The primary risks to the company’s future are the same as its opportunities as it now looks to expand its reach beyond the US and other developed markets into higher growing emerging markets.
True diversification is achieved by owning investments across multiple asset classes with low correlation to one another, but that hasn't worked over the past 18 months with stocks being "the only game in town." Is diversification dead or will "the knife cut both ways" for this style of investing?
It would be an understatement to say that the gold market has struggled as of late. Friday and Monday’s two-day decline of -13.7% represented the worst two-day drop since 1980. But have the fundamentals for gold really changed that quickly or is something else driving the price movement?
With all the heavy handed intervention by central banks, some have begun to question the utility of fiat currencies. This has given rise to new alternative currencies including the completely digital bitcoin.
Back in June of last year we first wrote about the concept of Antifragility and a promising new exchange traded product that had the potential to deliver antifragile returns. Since writing that first post we believe certain dynamics have shifted in the market, and as a result we no longer use the product for hedging purposes in our portfolios.
Cyprus is making front page news due to some radical terms which the Troika proposed for a bailout of their banking system. Although the initial proposal has been shot down, the damage to the European banking system may have already been done.
Since the financial crisis the reasons for favoring EM have changed. In a world where most developed countries are struggling under the weight of excessive debt and lackluster economic growth, emerging economies stand out as a diamond in the rough, but strong economic fundamentals have not translated into outperformance for EM equities.
Two weeks ago we unpacked the issue of The Growth Recession, in which we cited productivity growth as one of many possible answers to the question of where all the jobs have gone. Today we ask a different question: where have all the workers gone?
The price of gold is reflecting the tug of war between near-term expectations of a global recovery and long-term inflation risks. As the old saying goes, “gold is no one’s liability” which makes it the perfect life raft for investors with a long-term perspective faced with a global economy that is drowning in debt.
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