What We're Reading

As the old saying goes, 'buy' when stocks are hated and there's blood in the streets but for the Russian market, one might want to sit on their hands before buying the Russian ETF RSX until Mr. Putin becomes more "market friendly".

It would seem Putin’s dream of making Russia one of the world’s five biggest economies by 2020 is now in ruins, according to Sergei Guriev, a former economic adviser to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev who fled to Paris last year. He says it could have been achieved had Putin focused on delivering economic growth of 5 percent to 6 percent as promised.

“Russia had such a massive potential because of its inefficiencies that it was perfectly feasible to achieve this rate of economic growth,” said Guriev. “What changed is that the government decided not to fulfill its promises.”

According to Bloomberg The sentiment was different in 2000, when Putin replaced Boris Yeltsin. One of his early acts was to close Russia’s radar base in Cuba, the only intelligence-gath

China traders on margin accounts is a thought both wildly exciting, yet utterly terrifying at the same time.  Even more so in the wake of $10 billion in fraudulent currency trades discovered just last week. 

Chinese markets have had a long standing reputation as being nothing more than unmonitored casinos plagued with corruption and insider trading.  What could possibly go wrong?

According to the WSJ, the Hong Kong and Shanghai stock exchanges have published an overhaul of rules governing a new trading link that will open China's tightly held capital markets to the investing public, ahead of a launch that could take place as early as end of October.

The Chinese government has vowed to encourage further capital flow and open the country’s markets to international investors and conceded previously that numerous reforms would have to take place.  Such reforms risk destabilizing its economy, which is still veiled by strict capital controls.  Therefore the government has been implementin

Polls released this week showed for the first time that a majority – an extremely small majority, but a majority nonetheless – of Scots favor independence, although other polls suggest the no camp remains in the lead. A poll is not the election, which will be held Sept. 18, but it is still a warning that something extraordinary might happen very soon. The political union between Scotland and England might be abolished after 300 years. The implications of this are enormous and generally ignored.

Obviously, this raises a host of question about how such a divorce might take place, whether the expected time frame – divorce by 2016 – will be adhered to, and how state property might be divided. It also raises the question of Scottish foreign policy. Will Scotland remain in NATO? Will it have membership in the European Union? Will it continue to use the pound sterling, and if not, how will it roll out its own currency?

These are important questions, but far more important issues will follow

The U.S. posted a record cross-border investment outflow in June as China and Japan reduced their holdings of Treasuries and private investors abroad sold bonds and notes.

The total net outflow of long-term U.S. securities and short-term funds such as bank transfers was $153.5 billion, after an inflow of $33.1 billion the previous month, the Treasury Department said in a report today. The June figure, and $40.8 billion in net selling of Treasury bonds and notes by private investors in June, were the largest on record, the Treasury said.

“Right at the beginning of June, you had a very strong sell-off of Treasuries and that’s what frightened a lot of private investors,” Gennadiy Goldberg, U.S. strategist at TD Securities USA LLC in New York, said by phone. “As yields stayed lower in subsequent months, some of the investors probably resumed their buying.”

China’s holdings of U.S. Treasuries declined by $2.5 billion to $1.27 trillion, while Japanese holdings dropped $600 million to $1.2

The topic of income inequality and its effects has been the subject of countless analysis stretching back generations and crossing geopolitical boundaries. Despite the tendency to speak about this issue in moral terms, the central questions are economic ones: Would the U.S. economy be better off with a narrower income gap? And, if an unequal distribution of income hinders growth, which solutions could do more harm than good, and which could make the economic pie bigger for all?

Given the decades--indeed, centuries--of debate on this subject, it comes as no surprise that the answers are complex. A degree of inequality is to be expected in any market economy. It can keep the economy functioning effectively, incentivizing investment and expansion--but too much inequality can undermine growth.

Higher levels of income inequality increase political pressures, discouraging trade, investment, and hiring. Keynes first showed that income inequality can lead affluent households (Americans include

In September 2013, China became the biggest net importer of crude, beating out the U.S. for the first time. This came as no surprise, given how rapidly China’s thirst for oil has grown, although landing in top place happened a little ahead of U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) predictions that it would take place in 2014. However, where the U.S. has been shoring up its own internal production, China has lagged behind. Between 2011 and 2014, U.S. oil production rose by 31 percent, as opposed to China, which saw its own production increase by a little more than 5 percent over that time. This leaves China utterly dependent on oil imports, a vulnerable position to be in at a time when its economy is beginning to wobble.

China’s demand for black gold is only set to increase, causing it to spend a staggering $500 billion a year on imports by 2020, according to Wood Mackenzie. This increase is being fueled largely by an explosion in car ownership. But who will be the faithful bartender, ref

Americans lust for things they cannot afford continues as credit usage has rebounded since the height of the credit crisis however, with the Fed's current zero interest rate policy (ZIRP), the ongoing use of credit is not necessarily a thing for concern.

After all, if you were able to refinance your home from 6% down to 3%, that's a good thing, right?  Ditto for your credit cards which may have been 9.9% prior to 2008 and now down at much lower levels.  Indeed ZIRP has aided corporations and individuals to grab historic, once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to restructure existing debt and issue new debt for acquisitions for almost nothing.

In that respect, I guess Obama's statement "we're much better off than we were" would ring true here.

What does bother me, however, is the enormous recovery and usage of subprime lending.  Those loans for many autos, payday loans, title loans and credit cards for those with less than a pristine credit FICO score.

While working in mortgage banking, w

My simplistic view of the stock market, the one my muddled brain is able to wrap around, is to imagine that of the waterfalls at the Continental Divide at Glacier National Park in Montana.  Numerous rivers, all converging into to one.  Hedge funds, pension funds, investment firms, your own 401k, option flows, you name it.........and share buybacks.

Throughout the recovery, the amount of cash being held on corporate balance sheets was in some instances, astounding, leaving many investors wondering if/when the cash would be deployed. 

Well if you haven't noticed, they have been deploying more and more.  Just imagine the many streams you see in this image to the right.  One is M&A which can be the acquisition of a company to compliment ones existing structure OR a direct competitor which is a plus for a stock by making your space that much smaller.  Another stream, a small one, is (hopefully) R&D, another stream represents cash being returned to shareholders via higher dividends and las

Pretty much as I had expected.  Consumers are tapped out and you can blame inflation the Fed says doesn't exist the necessities, food and gasoline.  Certainly the packages have become small to mask the cost but we all know it's there, lurking.  We're getting less and less for our hard earned buck and $20 just doesn't buy what it used to....leaving less for dining out, electronics, clothing, vacations, etc.  

Retailers beginning to feel the pinch may shift to more coupons, clearance sales, preferred customer discounts.  Others will continue to tighten the belt internally moving more to cloud, temp agencies for personnel (a huge cost savings) and other cost-cutting measures.  Insurers for example have discovered that making lump sum payments to Doctors for Cancer patients saves them over 30%.

It won't take much, however, for overseas tensions to cause a spike in oil/gas prices and then what?  We're teetering on the spending cliff in my opinion and something has to give.........

From Gall

A view of the the NFIB survey and wage growth gives a hint of what may lie ahead in the wage sector.  Consumer spending dropped $7 in June which surprised many. 

(CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE)

While Americans' spending in June was generally on par or lower than their average May spending, this month's $7 drop is one of the largest recorded by Gallup during this time of year since 2008, when June spending fell by $10. The June 2008 spending average of $104 is still the highest average for that month in Gallup's six-year trend.

Can it be the new jobs being created (majority at the low end) is weighing on consumers pocketbook?  #shocker!  But what about the spending of the wealthy lifting all boats?  You know; that good old trickle down effect?

According to Econoday, the drop in daily spending among all Americans can largely be attributed to upper-income Americans spending less in June. Could the wealthy be running low on things to buy?  Yes sarcasm on my part but a drop is not what any

Given today's big GPS miss (-2.9% vs. expected -1.8%), I felt we should take a look at the historical performance of the S&P500 when it comes to recessions.  For all of those who harp that the stock market is not the economy, past reactions to recessions is certainly interesting.

Click image to enlarge.

Chart courtesy of ElliottWaveAnalytics

As highlighted here previously, China is clearly not the only country exploring the wonderful world of 3D printing and it's application to housing.  Sadly the loser will be the average construction worker.

The Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia in Barcelona is working on a set of robots that will soon be able to build complex structures by extruding layers of concrete, a process that might be a bit slow but that will allow strange, unique shapes to be formed using concepts popularized by plastic 3D printers.

The team, led by Sasa Jokic and Petr Novikov, has created small robots, called Minibuilders that perform various tasks. The Foundation Robot lays down a structure base while the Grip Robot sits at the top of the foundation and runs around it, laying down a bead of cement and instantly curing it so it can maintain its upwards motion. Finally a Vacuum Robot clings to the side of the object and lays down perpendicular sw

Five years since the end of the Great Recession, the economy has finally regained the nine million jobs it lost. But not all industries recovered equally.  This awesome interactive from the NYTimes demonstrates what's moving and what is not along with over 200 charts drilling it down in simple terms.  Tell your high school and college attendees.  Are they in these growth areas?   Click chart to make the jump to the interactive.

Here we go again but should anyone be surprised?  This is one of those days when people will come out and say "the market is not the economy" yet we all know job growth remains tepid at best and with that, one has to ask "where will the growth come from?"  See the ginormous infographic below.

World Bank has lowered its forecasts for developing countries, now eyeing growth at 4.8 percent this year, down from its January estimate of 5.3 percent. Signs point to strengthening in 2015 and 2016 to 5.4 and 5.5 percent, respectively. China is expected to grow by 7.6 percent this year, but this will depend on the success of rebalancing efforts. If a hard landing occurs, the reverberations across Asia would be widely felt.

There's always a BUT

Yet Variant Perceptions survey of small businesses (a proxy for future growth) shows the belief that wage growth will pick up for the rest of the year driven by much tighter labour market. (My thoughts: many of those who have left the workforce may not ret

Being reported in the Wall Street Journal, the EU to Investigate Corporate Tax Codes in Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands after criticism of their tax rates for Corporate offshore havens.  AAPL specifically being mentioned in the news as theirs use of favorable Irish tax laws allowed it to pay just a 3.7% tax rate on non-U.S. income during its last fiscal year. That, in turn, is a big reason $132.2B of Apple's $150.6B  cash balance at the end of FQ2 was offshore.  Tim Cook was grilled by Congress last year over Apple's offshore tax payments; Cook responded in part by calling for an overhaul of the oft-criticized U.S. corporate tax code.

Of course there has been an ongoing push up on the Hill for another "tax holiday" where Corporations can repatriate overseas funds.  This being met with resistance as the 2004 tax holiday saw the funds spent, not on R&D and job creation, but largely returned returned to shareholders via dividends and buybacks; acts which were specifically prohibited....

Jeffrey Dorfman's recent column in Forbes ("10 Essential Truths Liberals Need to Learn") is not a partisan attack on liberals. It is a clear-cut summary of some basic laws of economics that hold no matter what your political beliefs happen to be. Unfortunately, too many Republicans, Democrats, and bureaucrats are guilty of ignoring these laws. In my experience, it's also true that too many investors fail to understand these fundamental truths. I've only listed the laws here; for an explanation of each be sure to read the whole thing: (HT: Mark Perry)

1) Government cannot create wealth, jobs, or income.

2) Income inequality does not affect the economy.

3) Low wages are not corporate exploitation.

4) Environmental over-regulation is a regressive tax that falls hardest on the poor.

5) Education is not a public good.

6) High CEO pay is no worse than high pay to athletes or movie stars. 

7) Consumer spending is not what drives the economy.

8) When government provides things for free, they