Guild’s Basic Needs Index
February 05, 2016
Market Summary World markets remain in a period of correction. Accordingly, we are cautious and awaiting lower prices before investing the large amount of cash in client accounts. Many now believe that the U.S. will go into a recession in 2016. We do not see that occurring; the U.S.
January 28, 2016
Market Summary The U.S. is currently in a market correction. What should we do during this correction? Does the correction signal that a recession is in store for 2016? There is no doubt that the U.S. market has followed most other world markets into a correction phase. As of
January 22, 2016
How Fast Will the Fed Raise Rates? The “dot plot” of the Federal Reserve shows how the opinions of various FOMC participants stack up, and is published after each meeting. December’s dot plot suggests that the majority is anticipating four rate increases in 2016, ending the year with the Fed
January 15, 2016
China: Investor Confusion Leading to Volatility According to Jonathan Anderson of Emerging Advisors Group (EM Advisor Group), who is our favorite China economic analyst, his “base case” for China has shifted. Regular readers know that we have followed Mr. Anderson for many years, and that in our view he has
January 08, 2016
2016 Outlook As regular readers know, we view the U.S. Dollar as the key to the outlook for stocks in 2016. (In the summary section above, we explain why a strong U.S. Dollar has gone from being a positive for the market in years past, to being a negative for
December 31, 2015
Best of Breed in 2016 In the era of plentiful liquidity that accompanied QE and six-plus years of near-zero interest rates, the rising tide lifted many boats that really didn’t deserve to get lifted. U.S. markets are now slightly over-valued, and have a number of psychological and macroeconomic headwinds. We
December 24, 2015
This Year In Review And The Year Ahead 2015 was a year of divergences. Developed markets outperformed developing markets, services outperformed manufacturing, and commodity-related companies and economies underperforming everything else. Broader indices often served to conceal these divergences, with some software-related names, for example, far outpacing the performance of the
December 18, 2015
100 Million Times Faster? Quantum Computing Is In the House Last Tuesday, the Google Research Blog announced the publication of a new paper by Alphabet’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) Quantum AI team, reporting on the results of experiments run on the quantum computer system that GOOG operates jointly with NASA. That
December 11, 2015
Market Summary As we survey the investment horizon for 2016 the picture that we see is not highly attractive. Economic and Financial Fundamentals: Slightly Positive On a fundamental basis, the world is growing at a modest rate, and the return to a big deflationary trend in North America, Europe, or
December 04, 2015
Sunnis, Shi’ites, and Surprises After almost five years of civil war, the conflict in Syria has spilled over to Europe in the form of an ongoing refugee crisis, and now through the terrorist attacks in Paris — which, according to Islamic State claims, came as retaliation for French airstrikes. Now,
November 27, 2015
Tactical Views on the Year’s End and Beyond With just a little more than a month remaining to year’s end, we’re reflecting on the market’s performance thus far as we strategize the final push and begin to think about how to plan for 2016. Two themes stand out for us:
November 20, 2015
Real Estate: The Lay of the Land Stocks and real estate both suffered sharp declines during the Great Recession, and both have recovered in the more-than-six years since the downturn officially ended. Data Source: NCREIF, Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, Bloomberg The graph above shows the relative performance of
November 13, 2015
Some good news for small banks. Financials are some of the first beneficiaries in investors’ minds as they contemplate the imminent end of the Fed’s zero-interest-rate policy, but not all financials are created equal. We believe that the largest financial institutions will continue to face intense regulatory scrutiny and that
November 09, 2015
It May Not Be a “Sharing Economy,” But It’s Still Transformative We read recently about a new startup in the “sharing economy,” a French company called “BlaBlaCar” — an improvement on its original name that would make sense only to French speakers, “Covoitourage.” The shift is appropriate, since the ride-sharing
November 02, 2015
More Light in Dark PoolsDark pools are private trading venues, off the main exchanges, mostly run by large brokerage houses (although some are independent). On public exchanges such as the New York Stock Exchange or the NASDAQ, bids and offers are public. In dark pools, however, details of bids and
October 23, 2015
The Case for GoldRecently we have been hearing from some of our old friends from the gold world. Except for the occasional trading position, we have not been positive on gold for about four years. Our attitude has recently changed. A few weeks ago, and last week as well, we
