Clik here to view.
exit fees for junk bond funds?
contingency planning The SEC is doing contingency planning for the time when the Fed will declare the current five-year+ economic emergency over and begin to raise interest rates back to normal. What...
View ArticleClik here to view.
regulating money market funds
In the aftermath of the financial crisis, the government has been considering the risks to financial stability posed, not only be banks but also by asset management firms. As part of this effort, the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
new money market fund regulations
Yesterday, the SEC announced new rules for US money market funds, which in the aggregate hold $2.6 trillion in investors’ money. Of that amount, two-thirds is in funds catering to institutions and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
evaluating stocks vs. bonds
In theory, there’s no demand for stocks. There’s also no demand for bonds. There is, however, a demand for liquid forms of saving, a category that includes stocks, bonds and cash. Each of us will...
View ArticleClik here to view.
the SEC is investigating PIMCO’s pricing of its Total Return (BOND) ETF
Another day, another PIMCO problem. The Wall Street Journal reports the SEC is investigating whether the bond fund giant used its clout with brokers to get them to steer favorable investments to its...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bill Gross, PIMCO and Janus
Bill Gross is the (until recently) extraordinarily successful lead portfolio manager for the bond titan PIMCO, which he co-founded and which he sold to the European financial conglomerate Allianz in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
massive redemptions at PIMCO? …I don’t think so
Late last week, bond guru Bill Gross, founder and public face of PIMCO, resigned from that firm to go to work for a much smaller rival, Janus. This has led to speculation that the departure of Gross,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Stockton, bankruptcy and municipal workers’ pensions
In June 2012, Stockton, CA entered bankruptcy, burdened, as one would expect, by two types of obligations it was unable to meet: debt service on borrowings, and funding of pension/health care plans...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bill Gross: a wave of (self-) destruction?
As even casual readers of the financial press know, Bill Gross, the bond guru, recently left PIMCO, the firm he founded, for smaller (everything is smaller than PIMCO) rival Janus. Two aspects of his...
View ArticleClik here to view.
peer-to-peer lending, the next big banking innovation
the demise of the department store The story of the big commercial banks over the last forty years is sort of like that of the department stores, only in slow motion. In the case of the latter,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Jim Paulsen on 2015 (ii)
To recap: yesterday I wrote about the latest investment newsletter from Jim Paulsen, a strategist at Wells Fargo. In it he talks about a belief held widely (including, up until now, by me)–that the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Shaping a portfolio for 2015 (iv): interest rates
The Fed has made it clear that it intends to begin the multi-year process of raising short-term interest rates back to normal sometime in 2015. The agency says it expects to boost the Fed Funds rate...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Shaping a portfolio for 20145 (vi): the rest of the world
world GDP A recent World Bank study ranks the largest countries in the world by 2013 GDP. The biggest are: 1. USA $16.8 trillion 2. China $9.2 trillion 3. Japan $4.9...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Shaping a portfolio for 2015 (vii): putting the pieces together
I expect 2015 to be a “normal” year, in contrast to the past six. This is important. Over the past six recovery-from-recession years, global stock markets have had a strong upward bias. Yes,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
the Mainstay Marketfield fund (ii)
I’ve been thinking about the Mainstay Marketfield fund. The I shares (the ones with the longest track record) = MFLDX. Is this a risky fund? A lot depends on what you mean by “risky.” And a lot...
View ArticleClik here to view.
inflationary and deflationary mindsets
It’s fascinating to see how glibly and assuredly financial commentators and their guests have been talking about both inflation/deflation since the onset of the Great Recession. What I keep thinking...
View ArticleClik here to view.
want index underperformance …try an actively managed bond fund
Indexology ‘For a while I’ve been following the Indexology blog written by S&P. As the name and source suggest, the blog extolls the virtues of indexing–after all, S&P makes them and sells...
View ArticleClik here to view.
yesterday’s Fed meeting announcement
My experience with Fed meetings is that the stock market usually heads off in the wrong direction on the release of the Fed statement and accompanying documents, but then quickly reverses course and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
inflation on the rise?
Regular readers know that I like the economic work done by Jim Paulsen of Wells Capital, the Wells Fargo investment management arm. His May 1st “Economic and Market Perspective” piece argues that the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
cyclical growth vs. secular: which to choose now?
cyclical and secular The rhythmic cyclical economic progression from recession to expansion and back again affects everything the global economy. Yes, there are sectors like Materials that go through...
View Article
