You may have heard some of the statistics before. Less than 10% of Brazil’s roads are paved. More than 1/3 of India’s population lives without electricity in the home. And roughly 50% of Indonesians in the city of Jakarta (50%) do not have running water. In essence, if emerging markets are going to genuinely emerge, they’ll need to modernize. [...] Continue Reading...
There are a variety of ways to interpret stock market volatility. A rising CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) often typifies greater fear on the part of “options” investors such that they require protection against a monstrous sell-off. A widening of the daily trading range on a popular benchmark may also be indicative of explosive moves to the downside or upside. Moreover, upward revisions to the [...] Continue Reading...
Renewed fears over Thursday’s deadline for Greece’s debt swap with private bondholders served as the excuse. The truth is… the price of the S&P 500 had lived more than one standard deviation above a 50-day moving average since the last trading day of 2011; stocks were nearly certain to pull back. And it’s not like warning lights [...] Continue Reading...
Back in 2009, a flood of easy money worldwide sparked super-sized gains for the emerging markets… more so than their developed world counterparts. Granted, stock assets for industrialized and developing regions were both remarkable. Yet the best investment profits involved commodities, materials and rapid-fire economies with the most “stuff.” By mid-2010, the industrializing world found itself tightening fiscal and monetary policies to curtail runaway [...] Continue Reading...
The Economist tracks 42 distinct markets that represent 41 unique countries. Hong Kong is the stand-alone with its Hang Seng Index, separate and distinct from China’s Shanghai exchanges. So how are world stock assets peforming on the year? Through the mid-way point of July (7/15), only 13 of the 42 markets were positive in their local currencies. Put another [...] Continue Reading...
With a variety of benchmark ETFs hitting multi-year highs on 7/7/11 – Powershares Nasdaq 100 (QQQ), iShares Russell 2000 (IWM), iShares DJ Transports (IYT) — investors have placed the May-June swoon in their rear view. What’s more, economically sensitive sectors like tech and consumer discretionary are leading the charge. In fact, some analysts believe that the momentum in cyclicals is a clear sign that the [...] Continue Reading...
Even the bulls have been hedging their commentary lately. For example, Blackrock’s Bob Doll frequently points to accommodative monetary policy, strong corporate results and an increasingly self-sustaining economy as reasons for stocks to grind higher. More recently, though, the chief equity strategist acknowledged economic malaise by philosophizing, “A significant acceleration or deceleration in the pace of jobs growth has [...] Continue Reading...
The emerging market growth story is beautiful in its simplicity. Younger people with increasing amounts of income in industrializing countries should drive demand for more products, services, infrastructure and housing. Of course, the emergers are not without their concerns. They face more vexing inflation than developed economies. They’re more dependent on the natural resources they can or cannot export. [...] Continue Reading...
The latest weekly data from the Investment Company Institute? Money market fund inflows exceeded $24 billion. That represents the largest weekly increase since December. The lion’s share of the jump came from institutional shifts. No surprise there… money managers have been raising their cash levels in anticipation of a highly probable pullback. Nevertheless, U.S. stocks remain resilient. [...] Continue Reading...
Picking individual countries is not entirely dissimiliar to picking individual companies. You can tirelessly pursue “best of breed” stocks, but you may have better fortune with diversified index funds. Similarly, you might endeavor to ferret out a premier single-country ETF. Yet, over time, employing a diversified regional ETF is likely to provide more rewarding risk-adjusted results. With that said, if you’re willing to put [...] Continue Reading...
