Guild’s Basic Needs Index
April 23, 2014
Standards Ease for Home LoansStill Tough For Homebuilders, But Looking Better for Suppliers Even though it was exotic financial instruments and an over-leveraged system that brought on the financial crisis in 2007 and 2008, the first shot fired was the collapse of the sub-prime lending market. Readers will remember the slack lending
April 16, 2014
U.S. Hegemony, Global Flashpoints, and Military Spending In February, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel delivered the Obama administration’s proposed 2015 defense budget. It was notable for the reduction of the U.S. Army to its lowest force level since World War II. It envisions “a military capable of defeating any adversary, but too small
April 10, 2014
Robotics: New Applications, Mass Technologies Robots have been a theme of science fiction for nearly a century, and a gleam in investors’ eyes for about half that time. As with many such secular themes, especially technological ones, public excitement and the vision of possibilities can outrun real options for investment. Promises of
April 03, 2014
China Eases — One More Step in the Dance Chinese premier Li Keqiang gave a speech to provincial officials last week which indicated that the arrival of some form of stimulus to the Chinese economy is imminent. We continue to hold our core China thesis, that a national financial crisis and
March 27, 2014
Cross-Currents Affecting the Markets We see many cross-currents that are currently, or soon will be, affecting U.S. and European markets and thepsychology of investors: Positives: 1. Money is leaving money market funds and moving into stocks in a big way. Interest rates have risen slightly, yet money market funds pay virtually
March 20, 2014
Bioprinting: Applications May Be Closer Than You ThinkIn previous issues of this letter we’ve commented on 3D printing developments. Companies such as 3D Systems (NYSE: DDD), Stratasys (NASD: SSYS), and ExOne (NASD: XONE) may be familiar to investors who have investigated this new technology. 3D printing, or “additive manufacturing,” is a way
March 13, 2014
Will We Get an April-to-October Market Correction in 2014? We anticipate that the U.S. and European markets will rally this year, and close 2014 with good gains. However, the crisis in Ukraine and fears (probably misplaced) about China melting down are creating a crisis of confidence in the European and emerging
March 06, 2014
Regulatory Burden, Productivity Growth, and Jobs At the Davos meeting of the World Economic Forum, economists and market participants are surveyed, among other things, about the regulatory burdens faced in their countries. The results of this year’s survey, like those of the last few years, were not encouraging for the United States.
February 27, 2014
Two Key Themes That Are Not Widely Known —But Which Will Affect You and Your Life Substantially Key Theme #1: The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is going to change healthcare delivery in the U.S. in many ways… thus far, our research indicates that most of these changes are bad for the
February 20, 2014
Internet Investment in China Attracts Scrutiny from Central Bank A tiny slice of China’s savings are beginning to flow into new online investment vehicles run by Chinese internet giants such as Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu. Chinese regulators are now looking at the phenomenon — and so are China’s big commercial banks, who
February 13, 2014
A Note on Solar Energy Economics We recently read a piece of analysis on solar power generation that we thought was worth passing on to our readers. Even though the naïve and unreasonable pursuit of renewables can put a whole economy in the soup, as we noted above, governments are very likely
February 06, 2014
Coals to Newcastle, Gas to the Gulf U.S. Shale Continues to Reshape Global Energy Markets and Alliances Last year, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) awarded a contract for the construction of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) import terminal. Yes, you read that correctly, as counter-intuitive as it may seem, the UAE
January 30, 2014
Investment Summary U.S. stock market earnings and growth prospects remain positive. The U.S. market is having a normal correction, and we will use this opportunity to spend some of the cash we have raised to buy stocks at a discount. The U.S. trailing P/E as of December 31, 2013 was about 16
January 23, 2014
Investment Summary The four emerging trends mentioned above are all significant parts of understanding the investment picture for 2014 and for the remainder of the decade. Trend #1: With large banks curtailing commodity trading businesses, there should be less risk of instability in commodity markets. The U.S. banking system could actually be
January 16, 2014
The “Internet of Things” for Consumers — Almost Here, or Still Too Soon? The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas is an annual Mecca for trend-seekers in tech. This year, one of the central themes of the show is one that we have touched on before in this letter —
January 09, 2014
The Bullish Case for 2014: Productivity Growth is the Key We are looking forward to 2014 with optimism, and we believe the key factor supporting the U.S. and global economies in the present phase of the economic cycle will be productivity growth. Our comments below were prompted by a similar analysis recently
