The third quarter 2017 was very good in most investment markets. This was especially true in international and emerging markets, which have lagged the US over the last 10 years.
Click here for the full Q3 2017 Q3 Market Review
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It’s becoming harder and harder to convince families and corporate clients that international diversification is good for them.
Back in 2013
It’s completely understandable. US stocks have done far better over the last 6 years. I wrote about this back in 2013 when I first sensed investor frustration that their professionally constructed portfolios were under-performing the S&P 500 (which is almost all Large US companies).
3 More Years Have Passed
Three ...
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3
APR
APR
This downturn in China could conceivably be a start of a major depression in that country.
I don’t expect this to be the case, but it is a remote possibility.
Does this mean the way the Chinese have been managing their economic growth has been a disaster?
Let’s not start calling “failure” so soon. A lot of the criticism I see of China is hypocritical. The US economy went through incredible gyrations during the “American Century,” including our Great Depression. ...
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25
AUG
AUG
A few weeks ago most pundits were certain the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates sometime this year. Now it doesn’t seem so certain. In fact, it seems unlikely now.
Janet Yellen may be an even better predictor than she knew. She said rates might not increase until 2017. As the years went by, the dial seemed to move to an earlier date as the ...
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24
AUG
AUG
Being able to hold on to your investments over the next several years will be an important strategy.
Friday was a hard day in the stock market with the S&P 500 down more than 3%. I would not necessarily say that August 21st was the “official start” of any particular phenomenon, but I do believe volatility in the stock market, and for that matter virtually all capital markets, will increase and remain high for many years.
Doesn’t everyone say ...
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23
AUG
AUG
Three days ago Greece seemed split on the referendum. The results, however, showed the “No’s” won by a wide margin. On July 4th I was told, by someone who is pretty knowledgeable about history, that the Greeks would probably vote “No.”
His reason was that “No” is the same response the Greeks gave Mussolini at the start of WW2 – another time in history when the Greeks felt bullied by larger European neighbors. The connection seems like a ...
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7
JUL
JUL
Many call it Warren Buffett’s bet against hedge funds.
Keep in mind the bet doesn’t pit Warren Buffett’s skill against other hedge fund managers. Buffett simply picked the world’s simplest index fund and bet its performance against hedge funds for a 10 year time period.
So what is the bet really? It isn’t Buffett against hedge funds. Rather, it is a challenge to hedge funds to prove aren’t utterly worthless……and they are losing.
There has been a lot of ...
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20
FEB
FEB
Hedge funds are closing this year at a rate not seen since 2009, according to Bloomberg. But this Bloomberg article is missing one critical point……why shut down at all if the investors are still keeping their money in the fund?
This question of mine went unanswered for my first few years in the financial industry. Just having bad performance generally isn’t reason enough for ...
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2
DEC
DEC
The price of oil dropped over 6% today and is now sitting just below $70 per barrel. This is NOT the direction most investors thought oil was supposed to move. Remember 2008 when oil was over $140 per barrel?
This is another great example of how unpredictable any investment price can be, especially commodities like oil and gold. More →
27
NOV
NOV
Jim Cramer has a decent piece on the end of Quantitative Easing (QE). He calls on Wall Street pundits to apologize for their incorrect predictions.
Cramer breaks it down quite well into several specific predictions that went wrong. The basic idea under fire — The Federal Reserve was propping up the economy with QE, and the moment QE ended the economy would crash like a house of cards.
The economy ...
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31
OCT
OCT