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. http://www.seasoninvestments.com/insights/coach-gets-the-tap/
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. http://www.seasoninvestments.com/insights/an-emerging-dichotomy/
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. http://www.seasoninvestments.com/insights/a-golden-life-raft/
We added AAPL to our watch list when it broke below $550 in November, and we purchased the stock yesterday in our client portfolios at roughly $451/share. We’ll spare you the technical details as there is no shortage of hyper-granular analysis available on the web, but here are a handful of high-level reasons for our decision. http://www.seasoninvestments.com/insights/buying-a-four-letter-word/
The global slowdown and specific concerns over China’s economy have resulted in Chinese equities being one of the worst performing markets this year. This weakness largely reflects the market’s uncertainty surrounding the soft or hard landing debate. We believe the underperformance has left China’s market very attractive from a valuation standpoint. http://www.seasoninvestments.com/insights/shanghai-hanging-low/
The improving fundamentals in emerging markets versus the deteriorating fundamentals in developed markets are primarily due to the different stages of the economic life cycle. Many emerging markets have made some tough, long-term decisions to bring their financial houses in order and are now reaping the benefits. http://www.seasoninvestments.com/insights/having-your-cake-and-eating-it-too/
It has long been debated to what extent the ECB will be willing (or even legally capable) of engaging in outright bond purchases of Eurozone countries’ sovereign debt. Such programs have already been implemented throughout this crisis, but such efforts have been limited and have fallen short of anything akin to the US Fed’s quantitative easing programs. http://www.seasoninvestments.com/insights/will-the-ecb-go-for-gold/
A “closed-end fund” (CEF) has a fixed number of shares that can be bought or sold by investors in the open market. As such, supply and demand for those shares can cause the price of the fund to diverge from the NAV of its underlying holdings. This can present unique opportunities or risks for investors. http://www.seasoninvestments.com/insights/micro-update-closed-end-funds/
Precious metals have been an excellent store of value and are considered to be on the more defensive end of the commodity risk spectrum. They tend to outperform the broader commodity complex when real interest rates are low, or negative as they are today, since the opportunity cost of holding a non-yielding asset is minimal. http://www.seasoninvestments.com/insights/micro-update-white-metals/
Walter Energy (ticker: WLT) is a pure play metallurgical coal producer with operations in the United States. The market for met coal has been very tight over the past several years due to constrained supply and increasing demand from emerging markets like China, India and Brazil. http://www.seasoninvestments.com/insights/micro-update-walter-energy/
As we head into the New Year there are four factors on our “Macro Radar” that we believe will be the primary drivers of financial market performance in 2012, which means we will spend a lot of time proactively focusing our research efforts on understanding and monitoring their development throughout the year. http://www.seasoninvestments.com/insights/macro-update-2012-macro-radar/
