It will get even worse for PR as Cuba opens up. Cuba will suck up a lot of tourist $, tourist capital investment, and Cuba will provide, cheap, educated, hard working workers for companies looking for it.

FYI:
Regards,
Ted
WSJ Slant:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-stock-futures-rise-putting-nasdaq-composite-on-track-for-more-gains-1429878630
Bloomberg Slant:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-24/nasdaq-futures-signal-stocks-to-rise-on-google-amazon-results
Reuters Slant;
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/24/us-markets-stocks-usa-idUSKBN0NF16J20150424
MKarketWatch Slant;
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-stocks-google-amazon-poised-to-lead-nasdaq-to-another-record-2015-04-24/print
WSJ Markets At A Glance:
http://markets.wsj.com/us
Sector Tracker:
http://www.sectorspdr.com/sectorspdr/tools/sector-tracker
Current Futures:
http://finviz.com/futures.ashx

@Tampabay

Tampabay
10:18AM Flag
I think its more of a matter of having too much Cash on hand for profitable companies, and innovative ways to make money with the cash, Why not find ways to give back to Company Owners, the share holders, Bay backs are one (easy) way to do this...

One of my takeaways from the paper's arguments is that the corporate mentality that has driven a significant portion of the buybacks has been too short term in its nature. Investments in labor (including additional technical training and other education for existing workers) and capital may take many years to fully provide a payback....particularly when the economy is struggling. But, if that part of the equation gets short changed in order to goose the stock price in the current quarter, the overall economy including the wages of its workers suffers in the long run. I am inclined to think some of that has been going on in recent years.

I'm still 100% in HY Muni bonds paying me about 5.1% - only state tax. Munis haven't seen capital appreciation this year. My guess it is the possible Fed increase later in the year holding them back.
My current plan is to stop the re-investment of dividends in Jan of 2016 and put that $ into other places, maybe high yield international bonds. Time will tell.

I am 100% in open end corporate junk. Many of the corporate junk funds are up around 4% YTD. But a friend of mine recently made a move into where the real action has been the past many weeks and that is emerging market debt. May move some there. Bank loan funds have also showed some life in 2015.

I'm still 100% in HY Muni bonds paying me about 5.1% - only state tax. Munis haven't seen capital appreciation this year. My guess it is the possible Fed increase later in the year holding them back.
My current plan is to stop the re-investment of dividends in Jan of 2016 and put that $ into other places, maybe high yield international bonds. Time will tell.

FYI: DoubleLine Capital’s Jeffrey Gundlach bought $20 million of junk-rated Puerto Rico bonds this year as the commonwealth struggled with its fiscal crisis.
DoubleLine’s $2.26 billion Income Solutions Fund held $20 million of Puerto Rico general obligations as of Feb. 27, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The fund didn’t hold any commonwealth debt at the end of 2014. The bonds, which were issued in March 2014, traded Wednesday at record-low prices.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-22/gundlach-s-fund-buys-20-million-of-junk-rated-puerto-rico-bonds

FYI: The trade that George Soros and Stanley Druckenmiller pulled off in 1992 by betting against the British pound -- and making $1 billion in the process -- has gained legendary status. So when Bill Gross, the world's best-known bond investor, tweeted yesterday from his current employer Janus Capital that betting against German government debt is the trade of a "lifetime," he reached for that bit of history to benchmark the current opportunity.
Regards,
Ted
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/bill-grosss-short-lifetime-mean-120622905.html

FYI:
Regards,
Ted
http://www.mfwire.com/common/artprint2007.asp?storyID=51591&wireid=2

FYI:
Regards,
Ted
WSJ Slant:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-stock-futures-rise-buoyed-by-strong-earnings-reports-1429618699
Bloomberg Slant:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-21/u-s-stock-index-futures-climb-amid-earnings-reports-mylan-bid
Reuters Slant:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/21/us-markets-stocks-idUSKBN0NC16N20150421
MarketWatch Slant;
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-stocks-futures-climb-ahead-of-trio-of-dow-earnings-2015-04-21?dist=countdown
WSJ Markets At A Glance:
http://markets.wsj.com/us
Sector Tracker:
http://www.sectorspdr.com/sectorspdr/tools/sector-tracker
Current Futures:
http://finviz.com/futures.ashx

FYI: Biotechnology has been one of the best performing industries in the stock market over the past several years. According to S&P Capital IQ, there were numerous catalysts, for this substantial stock outperformance, including several blockbuster drug approvals that drove significant sales and earnings growth. Yet, S&P CIQ thinks the industry’s drivers, including a robust pipeline, remain intact and have a positive fundamental outlook - See more at: http://www.indexologyblog.com/2015/04/17/biotech-has-more-room-to-run/#sthash.O8OC1ZJJ.dpuf
Regards,
Ted
http://www.indexologyblog.com/2015/04/17/biotech-has-more-room-to-run/
ETF Trend Article:
http://www.etftrends.com/2015/04/biotech-etf-run-not-over-yet-says-analyst/

India plans to raise about $6.5 billion (Dh24bn) by taxing foreign firms for capital gains they made in previous years."

Don't think that move would encourage foreign investment.

The India related funds have been weak for the past several weeks; somewhat, perhaps related to profit taking from the previous run in prices.
A note from the article: "India plans to raise about $6.5 billion (Dh24bn) by taxing foreign firms for capital gains they made in previous years."
This article relates some new information relative to taxation of investments towards some organizations, which may of value for your investment decisions.
Regards,
Catch

Corzine was Gov. of New Jersey, too. Another illustration of politicians in bed with Big Money. I'm in Massachusetts. The previous Governor, Deval Patrick, is joining Bain Capital. (Uncle Mittens Romney. Is he still there? Maybe not...) Makes me puke.

Curious why he would not disclose if he continues to purchase shares of his fund. He does have a $1M in it. So answer either way wouldn't have mattered much in my mind. I am an investor and would have appreciated if he answered the question.
Or is it because he is thinking of starting another fund? I wouldn't want him to, but may be he is and that's where he is dedicating more capital.
Also he clarified it is Emerging Markets Growth and Income. Not International Growth and Income. So it would serve investors better word Overseas in the name was replaced with word Emerging.

Here are some quick highlights from Thursday night’s conversation with Andrew Foster of Seafarer.
Seafarer’s objective: Andrew’s hope is to outperform his benchmark (the MSCI EM index) “slowly but steadily over time.” He describes the approach as a “relative return strategy” which pursues growth that’s more sustainable than what’s typical in developing markets while remaining value conscious.
Here’s the strategy: you need to start by understanding that the capital markets in many EM nations are somewhere between “poorly developed” and “cruddy.” Both academics and professional investors assume that a country’s capital markets will function smoothly: banks will make loans to credit-worthy borrowers, corporations and governments will be able to access the bond market to finance longer-term projects and stocks will trade regularly, transparently and at rational expense.
None of that may safely be assumed in the case of emerging markets; indeed, that’s what might distinguish an “emerging” market from a developed one. The question becomes: what are the characteristics of companies that might thrive in such conditions.
The answer seems to be (1) firms that can grow their top line steadily in the 7-15% per annum range and (2) those who can finance their growth internally. The focus on the top line means looking for firms that can increase revenues by 7-15% without obsessing about similar growth in the bottom line. It’s almost inevitable that EM firms will have “stumbles” that might diminish earnings for one to three years; while you can’t ignore them, you also can’t let them drive your investing decisions. “If the top line grows,” Andrew argues, “the bottom line will follow.” The focus on internal financing means that the firms will be capable of funding their operations and plans without needing recourse to the unreliable external sources of capital.
Seafarer tries to marry that focus on sustainable moderate growth “with some current income, which is a key tool to understanding quality and valuation of growth.” Dividends are a means to an end; they don’t do anything magical all by themselves. Dividends have three functions. They are:

An essential albeit crude valuation tool – many valuation metrics cannot be meaningfully applied across borders and between regions; there’s simply too much complexity in the way different markets operate. Dividends are a universally applicable measure.
A way of identifying firms that will bounce less in adverse market conditions – firms with stable yields that are just “somewhat higher than average” tend to be resilient. Firms with very high dividend yields are often sending out distress signals.
A key and under-appreciated signal for the liquidity and solvency of a company – EMs are constantly beset by liquidity and credit shocks and unreliable capital markets compound the challenge. Companies don’t survive those shocks as easily as people imagine. The effects of liquidity and credit crunches range from firms that completely miss their revenue and earnings forecasts to those that drown themselves in debt or simply shutter. Against such challenges dividends provide a clear and useful signal of liquidity and solvency.

It’s certainly true that perhaps 70% of the dispersion of returns over a 5-to-10 year period are driven by macro-economic factors (Putin invades-> the EU sanctions-> economies falter-> the price of oil drops-> interest rates fall) but that fact is not useful because such events are unforecastable and their macro-level impacts are incalculably complex (try “what effect will European reaction to Putin’s missile transfer offer have on shadow interest rates in China?”).
Andrew believes he can make sense of the ways in which micro-economic factors, which drive the other 30% of dispersion, might impact individual firms. He tries to insulate his portfolio, and his investors, from excess volatility by diversifying away some of the risk, imagining a “three years to not quite forever” time horizon for his holdings and moving across a firm’s capital structure in pursuit of the best risk-return balance.
While Seafarer is classified as an emerging markets equity fund, common stocks have comprised between 70-85% of the portfolio. “There’s way too much attention given to whether a security is a stock or bond; all are cash flows from an issuer. They’re not completely different animals, they’re cousins. We sometimes find instruments trading with odd valuations, try to exploit that.” As of January 2015, 80% of the fund is invested directly in common stock; the remainder is invested in ADRs, hard- and local-currency convertibles, government bonds and cash. The cash stake is at a historic low of 1%.
Thinking about the fund’s performance: Seafarer is in the top 3% of EM stock funds since launch, returning a bit over 10% annually. With characteristic honesty and modesty, Andrew cautions against assuming that the fund’s top-tier rankings will persist in the next part of the cycle:

We’re proud of performance over the last few years. We have really benefited from the fact that our strategy was well-positioned for anemic growth environments. Three or four years ago a lot of people were buying the story of vibrant growth in the emerging markets, and many were willing to overpay for it. As we know, that growth did not materialize. There are signs that the deceleration of growth is over even if it’s not clear when the acceleration of growth might begin. A major source of return for our fund over 10 years is beta. We’re here to harness beta and hope for a little alpha.

That said, he does believe that flaws in the construction of EM indexes makes it more likely that passive strategies will underperform:

I’m actually a fan of passive investing if costs are low, churn is low, and the benchmark is soundly constructed. The main EM benchmark is disconnected from the market. The MSCI EM index imposes filters for scalability and replicability in pursuit of an index that’s easily tradable by major investors. That leads it to being not a really good benchmark. The emerging markets have $14 trillion in market capitalization; the MSCI Core index captures only $3.8 trillion of that amount and the Total Market index captures just $4.2 trillion. In the US, the Total Stock Market indexes capture 80% of the market. The comparable EM index captures barely 25%.

Highlights from the questions:
While the fund is diversified, many people misunderstand the legal meaning of that term. Being diversified means that no more than 25% of the portfolio can be invested in securities that individually constitute more than 5% of the portfolio. Andrew could, in theory, invest 25% of the fund in a single stock or 15% in one and 10% in another. As a practical matter, a 4-5% position is “huge for us” though he has learned to let his winners run a little longer than he used to, so the occasional 6% position wouldn’t be surprising.
A focus on dividend payers does not imply a focus on large cap stocks. There are a lot of very stable dividend-payers in the mid- to small-cap range; Seafarer ranges about 15-20% small cap amd 35-50% midcap.
The fundamental reason to consider investing in emerging markets is because “they are really in dismal shape, sometimes the horrible things you read about them are true but there’s an incredibly powerful drive to give your kids a better life and to improve your life. People will move mountains to make things better. I followed the story of one family who were able to move from a farmhouse with a dirt floor to a comfortable, modern townhouse in one lifetime. It’s incredibly inspiring, but it’s also incredibly powerful.”
With special reference to holdings in eastern Europe, you need to avoid high-growth, high-expectation companies that are going to get shell-shocked by political turmoil and currency devaluation. It’s important to find companies that have already been hit and that have proved that they can survive the shock.
Bottom line: Andrew has a great track record built around winning by not losing. His funds have posted great relative returns in bad markets and very respectable absolute returns in frothy ones. It’s a pattern that I’ve found compelling.
Thanks to Timothy Gaar, David Hubbard, Sheldon Zafir and Heezsafe for raising questions with Andrew; regrets to Don Davis and Elie Tabet who were in the question queue when time ran out. I forwarded their contact information to Seafarer in hopes that their questions might yet be answered.
For folks unable to catch the call, there’s an available mp3 of the call. My observations, above, are based on notes that I took on the fly as the call proceeded, rather than on a careful replaying of the audio. They represent my interpretation plus my best attempt to reproduce Andrew’s words. I would, as always, be delighted to hear the reactions of some of the 40 other folks who participated as well.

The real news to me is Eventide itself. Has been riding Healthcare and small caps to hefty gains. Almost seems like mini version of Janus of the 90s. Time will tell if it is competence or just happened to hit the sweet spot. I'm assuming it is the latter and passing. If M* says something good about them, that would really seal the deal.

I'd be curious to hear what they are thinking about as far as capacity goes for each of the strategies... The previous target was $3 billion for the firm (currently around $2.4). Obviously, we have seen significant capital appreciation since...

In the prospectus, they stated that the distribution could include return of capital...so I just plan to watch it for a while after I make a small investment before committing serious $$$$.

Uhhh ...
Working on figuring out why this research isn't, well, stupid. The basic argument is this: if an "institutional investor" owns shares in two companies in the same industry, it's in the manager's best interest for both of the firms to overcharge which maximizes the firms' earnings and the investors' profits at the expense of customers. Since "the 1%" invest and "the 99%" shop, it's a systemic transfer of money from the latter to the former.
The proposed solution is this: allow each "institutional investor" to own one and only one stock in each industry sector.
Uhhh ...
(blinks)
Uhhh ...
Okay, the analysis is based on one of the world's worst and oddest industries, commercial airlines where capital costs are vast, a key resource (access to gates at hub airports) is guarded like a dragon's hoard and disruptors are few.

General Electric Co is a diversified company with products & services that range from aircraft engines, power generation, oil & gas production equipment, & household appliances to medical imaging, business & consumer financing and industrial products.

So if you invest in GE, you're blocked from any further investment in the seven industries in which it has operations?
The S&P 500 becomes the S&P No More Than 100?
Of course, you could only have one of Barnes & Noble and Borders because they represent an unassailable duopoly.
And it's at least plausible that the requirement would be that Fidelity, as a whole, could own only one bank since Posner keeps pointing an accusing finger at "BlackRock" without any hint of what at BlackRock owns the apparently dysfunctional, conflicting stakes.
Except for the fact that smart outsiders have so often said incredibly stupid things about the workings of the fund industry (the federal appeals court in one case decided that (a) rich people are smart, (b) rich people pay high fees for actively-managed hedge funds, and (c) the fees on actively-managed mutual funds are lower than those on hedge funds, therefore (d) the fees on mutual funds are reasonable.)
David

@scott
Yes. I have spoken with way too many folks who bitch about this or that about pricing from a particular company. My reply has been that, if you think you're being overcharged for a service and the company is making a profit; invest in the company.
Examples are everywhere; be it Comcast, a phone service provided...........
Well, I don't need to 'splain more.....
Hell, I know at this point in time that we are protecting what it costs our household to provide health insurance and pay all of the now higher deductibles. We're getting this money back from our healthcare investments. Although we don't really care about where the capital appreciation arrives.