What We're Reading

This week’s EVA brings the second edition of our new Random Thoughts format. The goal with this approach is to cover several key, but often unrelated, topics in a quick overview fashion.

In this issue, we are looking at, once again, the powerful financial force known as credit spreads.   Fortunately, they are not indicating financial stress at this time. We are also examining the supposed truism that this is one of the most detested bull markets of all time. Then, we wrap up with a look at the Fed’s and Wall Street’s forecasting track record (hint:  both make a dart-board look good!).

As always, your feedback is welcomed and appreciated.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

When the spread isn’t the thing. One of the themes this newsletter has emphasized most heavily this year has been the importance of the spread—or difference—between government and corporate bond yields. As we have repeatedly cited, when that gap is widening in a pronounced way bad things tend to happen both to the economy and financial

Love it or hate it, cash is playing an increasingly less important role in society.

In some ways this is great news for consumers. The rise of mobile and electronic payments means faster, convenient, and more efficient purchases in most instances. New technologies are being built and improved to facilitate these transactions, and improving security is also a priority for many payment providers.

However, the

The way we pay for things has changed dramatically over the past few years. Uber calculates your fare in real-time and charges you as you exit the car. The newest phones have chips that let you pay with a tap.

But that’s only scratching the surface. Visa, for one, envisions a future where pretty much any device could handle a payment, and we won’t even need a phone or credit card to make it work.

To get there and beyond, the payment-processing company is looking for some outside help. On Thursday (Feb. 4) it announced that it’s opening up its VisaNet platform to developers. Considering Visa processes 100 billion transactions per year, it’s a potentially powerful tool for that community. By letting developers focus on the experience and Visa managing the payments—from processing to security and risk—change could happen quickly.

So how will we pay in the not-too-distant future? Visa CTO Rajat Tenaja, head of innovation Jim McCarthy, and head of product Jack Forestell gave Quartz a pee

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