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Yesterday, the S&P 500 Index reached another all time closing high of 2298.37 and was up 0.80% for the day with the three best performing sections being Financials. Industrials and Technology. Year-to-date the Index is up 2.66%.
In viewing the markets, as I write, this morning both Europe and Asia-Pacific are up nicely while here in the States stocks look to open up while government bonds are down.
China Markets Close for New Year/Year of the Rooster/ GMO Quarterly Letter Is Trump a Get Out of Hell Free Card? No, but he may help us get out of Limbo 4Q2016 GMO Quarterly Letter features Ben Inker's "Is Trump a Get Out of Hell Free Card?" and Jeremy Grantham's "The Road to Trumpsville: The Long, Long Mistreatment of the American Working Class"
Holiday Markets Closed
01/26/2017 Last Nt Thursday Australia Day Australian Stock Exchange LtdAUSTRALIA
01/26/2017 Last Nt Thursday Republic Day National Stock Exchange of India INDIA
01/27/2017 Friday Lunar NY Eve 1 Shanghai Stock Exchange CHINA
01/30/2017 Monday Lunar New Year 3 Hong Kong Stock Exchange HONG KONG Shanghai Stock Exchange CHINA
01/31/2017 Tuesday Lunar New Year 4 Hong Kong Stock Exchange HONG KONG Shanghai Stock Exchange CHINA
02/01/2017 Wednesday Lunar New Year 8 Shanghai Stock Exchange CHINA
Chinese Are Celebrating Lunar New Year by Escaping ChinaBloomberg News The essence of China’s seven-day holiday, also called Spring Festival, is morphing as rising incomes and an expanding network of international flights prompt more people to go abroad -- the equivalent of Americans choosing Bermuda over the Midwest for Thanksgiving. Outbound travel for the holiday break is expected to top a record 6 million passengers, with airlines hauling near-full loads to Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia. The Spring Festival shuts down the world’s second-biggest economy for a week as hundreds of millions of factory and office workers leave their adopted homes in Shenzhen or Beijing to reconnect with their ancestral ones, often on the opposite side of the country. Thousands more expatriates return.
This year’s celebration, from Jan. 27 through Feb. 2, will see the biggest mass migration of people on Earth. More than 414 million Chinese will ride in planes and trains -- as if everyone in the European Union was on the move. Fueling those excursions is an economy growing annually by at least 6.7 percent since 1990, giving people more money to spend. Disposable income for urban households rose 165 percent from 2006 to 2015, reaching about 31,195 yuan ($4,551), according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-23/-12-000-trips-abroad-replace-chinese-new-year-treks-to-grandma-s @hank,Right on cue for the Trump Presidency ! Year of the Rooster The second trine consists of the Ox, Snake and Rooster. These three signs are said to possess endurance and application, with slow accumulation of energy, meticulous at planning but tending to hold fixed opinions. The three are said to be hard-working, modest, industrious, loyal, philosophical, patient, good-hearted and morally upright, but can also be self-righteous, egotistical, vain, judgmental, narrow-minded or petty.
GMO But, as with most things under the new regime, this is not assured and Inker said portfolios would need to be constructed with survival in mind.
‘This means focusing first and foremost on those areas where we believe either leads to decent outcomes. Emerging market value stocks are first on that list, followed by alternatives such as merger arbitrage.
‘After those come EAFE value stocks and US high quality stocks. At current yields, TIPS are a reasonable holding in multi-asset portfolios whether we are in purgatory or hell, although they do look a good deal better in hell.’
Inker added that credit - while less exciting than it was a year ago – would be worth holding in either scenario. ‘Other assets, such as broad US equities or developed market government bonds, seem hard to love in either of the plausible scenarios, and are consequently hard for us to want to hold. http://citywireselector.com/news https://www.gmo.com/docs/default-source/public-commentary/gmo-quarterly-letter.pdf?sfvrsn=42 Although a (Trump) 4% trend line isn’t impossible, lifting growth to that pace looks like a steep challenge, according to CNBC: Using the current estimates as a guide serves as a reminder that tomorrow’s Q4 data will show a wide gap between the current trend and President Trump’s “bold plan” to raise economic growth to 4% via tax cuts, deregulation, and infrastructure spending.
Although a (Trump) 4% trend line isn’t impossible, lifting growth to that pace looks like a steep challenge, according to CNBC:The economy has achieved 3 percent or better annual growth in gross domestic product just nine times in the past 27 years, and the last one was 11 years ago. So it’s fairly rare occurrence, and Trump will be lucky to hit that number, let alone the 4 percent he pledged during the campaign. One headwind is the reality facing the President’s plans to revive growth and generate new jobs in factories with more trade tariffs and generally taking a hard line on the economics of globalization. “You cannot just slap tariffs on and hope that will bring back middle class jobs,” notes Daron Acemoglu, an MIT economist. “The jobs that went to China would come back to robots rather than people.”
The good news is that growth appears set to pick up a bit in this year’s first quarter. Although it’s still early, the New York Fed’s preliminary Q1 projection for 2017 calls for GDP to accelerate modestly to 2.7%. Better, but nowhere near the President’s goals. http://www.capitalspectator.com/softer-growth-expected-for-tomorrows-us-q4-gdp-report/
Comments
Derf
Is Trump a Get Out of Hell Free Card?
No, but he may help us get out of Limbo
4Q2016 GMO Quarterly Letter features Ben Inker's "Is Trump a Get Out of Hell Free Card?" and Jeremy Grantham's "The Road to Trumpsville: The Long, Long Mistreatment of the American Working Class"
Holiday
Markets Closed
01/26/2017 Last Nt Thursday Australia Day Australian Stock Exchange LtdAUSTRALIA
01/26/2017 Last Nt Thursday Republic Day National Stock Exchange of India INDIA
01/27/2017 Friday Lunar NY Eve 1 Shanghai Stock Exchange CHINA
01/30/2017 Monday Lunar New Year 3 Hong Kong Stock Exchange HONG KONG
Shanghai Stock Exchange CHINA
01/31/2017 Tuesday Lunar New Year 4 Hong Kong Stock Exchange HONG KONG
Shanghai Stock Exchange CHINA
02/01/2017 Wednesday Lunar New Year 8 Shanghai Stock Exchange CHINA
02/02/2017 Thursday Lunar New Year 5 Shanghai Stock Exchange CHINA
http://markets.on.nytimes.com/research/markets/holidays/holidays.asp?display=all&timeOffset=1
Chinese Are Celebrating Lunar New Year by Escaping ChinaBloomberg News
The essence of China’s seven-day holiday, also called Spring Festival, is morphing as rising incomes and an expanding network of international flights prompt more people to go abroad -- the equivalent of Americans choosing Bermuda over the Midwest for Thanksgiving. Outbound travel for the holiday break is expected to top a record 6 million passengers, with airlines hauling near-full loads to Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia.
The Spring Festival shuts down the world’s second-biggest economy for a week as hundreds of millions of factory and office workers leave their adopted homes in Shenzhen or Beijing to reconnect with their ancestral ones, often on the opposite side of the country. Thousands more expatriates return.
This year’s celebration, from Jan. 27 through Feb. 2, will see the biggest mass migration of people on Earth. More than 414 million Chinese will ride in planes and trains -- as if everyone in the European Union was on the move.
Fueling those excursions is an economy growing annually by at least 6.7 percent since 1990, giving people more money to spend. Disposable income for urban households rose 165 percent from 2006 to 2015, reaching about 31,195 yuan ($4,551), according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-23/-12-000-trips-abroad-replace-chinese-new-year-treks-to-grandma-s
@hank,Right on cue for the Trump Presidency !
Year of the Rooster
The second trine consists of the Ox, Snake and Rooster. These three signs are said to possess endurance and application, with slow accumulation of energy, meticulous at planning but tending to hold fixed opinions. The three are said to be hard-working, modest, industrious, loyal, philosophical, patient, good-hearted and morally upright, but can also be self-righteous, egotistical, vain, judgmental, narrow-minded or petty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_zodiac
GMO
But, as with most things under the new regime, this is not assured and Inker said portfolios would need to be constructed with survival in mind.
‘This means focusing first and foremost on those areas where we believe either leads to decent outcomes. Emerging market value stocks are first on that list, followed by alternatives such as merger arbitrage.
‘After those come EAFE value stocks and US high quality stocks. At current yields, TIPS are a reasonable holding in multi-asset portfolios whether we are in purgatory or hell, although they do look a good deal better in hell.’
Inker added that credit - while less exciting than it was a year ago – would be worth holding in either scenario. ‘Other assets, such as broad US equities or developed market government bonds, seem hard to love in either of the plausible scenarios, and are consequently hard for us to want to hold.
http://citywireselector.com/news
https://www.gmo.com/docs/default-source/public-commentary/gmo-quarterly-letter.pdf?sfvrsn=42
Although a (Trump) 4% trend line isn’t impossible, lifting growth to that pace looks like a steep challenge, according to CNBC:
Using the current estimates as a guide serves as a reminder that tomorrow’s Q4 data will show a wide gap between the current trend and President Trump’s “bold plan” to raise economic growth to 4% via tax cuts, deregulation, and infrastructure spending.
Although a (Trump) 4% trend line isn’t impossible, lifting growth to that pace looks like a steep challenge, according to CNBC:The economy has achieved 3 percent or better annual growth in gross domestic product just nine times in the past 27 years, and the last one was 11 years ago. So it’s fairly rare occurrence, and Trump will be lucky to hit that number, let alone the 4 percent he pledged during the campaign.
One headwind is the reality facing the President’s plans to revive growth and generate new jobs in factories with more trade tariffs and generally taking a hard line on the economics of globalization. “You cannot just slap tariffs on and hope that will bring back middle class jobs,” notes Daron Acemoglu, an MIT economist. “The jobs that went to China would come back to robots rather than people.”
The good news is that growth appears set to pick up a bit in this year’s first quarter. Although it’s still early, the New York Fed’s preliminary Q1 projection for 2017 calls for GDP to accelerate modestly to 2.7%. Better, but nowhere near the President’s goals.
http://www.capitalspectator.com/softer-growth-expected-for-tomorrows-us-q4-gdp-report/