Research & News
Asset Allocation Weekly (November 22, 2019)
by Asset Allocation Committee (NB: Due to the Thanksgiving holiday, the next report will be published on December 6.) The health of the consumer is critical to the future path of economic growth. For the most part, consumption is accounting for most of the growth in the economy. This chart shows the four-quarter average of the… Read More »
Weekly Geopolitical Report – Thirty Years Since the Fall of the Berlin Wall: A Retrospective, Part II (November 18, 2019)
by Bill O’Grady (Due to the Thanksgiving holiday, the next report will be published on Dec. 2.) In Part I of this report, we presented the first two of four ideas about the post-Cold War era and how well they fared. This week, we will cover the remaining two ideas and conclude with market ramifications.… Read More »
Asset Allocation Weekly (November 15, 2019)
by Asset Allocation Committee The yield curve has steepened since the FOMC started cutting rates, raising hope that a recession can be avoided. In this report, we will examine whether these hopes make sense. The above chart shows two recession indicators from two different regional Federal Reserve banks, Atlanta and New York. The former is a… Read More »
Weekly Geopolitical Report – Thirty Years Since the Fall of the Berlin Wall: A Retrospective, Part I (November 11, 2019)
by Bill O’Grady On August 13, 1961, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), otherwise known as East Germany, began construction on a barrier that would slow the emigration of Germans to the Federal Republic of Germany, known as West Germany. Prior to the construction of the wall, it is estimated that 3.5 million East Germans emigrated… Read More »
Asset Allocation Weekly (November 8, 2019)
by Asset Allocation Committee The Federal Reserve, in its Financial Accounts of the United States database,[1] has created a Distributional Financial Accounts sub-database that measures household wealth by percentile groups. The data is only reported in four broad categories (Top 1%, 90% to 99%, 50% to 89%, and bottom 50%) and has a fairly short history,… Read More »
Weekly Geopolitical Report – Japan: Will the Tax Hike Bite? Part II (November 4, 2019)
by Patrick Fearon-Hernandez, CFA Some of Japan’s biggest economic hiccups have started with a major tax hike, so investors are wondering what will happen following a boost in the country’s value-added tax (a type of sales tax) that went into effect early last month. To lay the groundwork for understanding the VAT hike and its… Read More »
Asset Allocation Weekly (November 1, 2019)
by Asset Allocation Committee We continue to hold a favorable outlook toward gold despite evidence that current prices may be getting a bit ahead of themselves. Our gold model puts fair value at 1391. In the coming months, we expect the fair value to rise; both the ECB and the Federal Reserve have resumed expanding their… Read More »
Weekly Geopolitical Report – Japan: Will the Tax Hike Bite? Part I (October 28, 2019)
by Patrick Fearon-Hernandez, CFA Even though Japan has one of the world’s largest economies and accounts for a hefty share of global stock market capitalization, it isn’t getting nearly as much attention from investors as it did during its boom years in the 1970s and 1980s. In part, that’s because Japan’s economic growth has become… Read More »