Risk assets across the board are trading lower today after China devalued their currency, the renminbi (or “yuan” as it’s referred to in international context), overnight by 1.9%. China currently maintains a peg to the US dollar in order to keep the exchange rate in a very tight band. They do this by intervening each…
This morning it was announced that another company we own is being taken over: Precision Castparts (PCP) is being bought by Berkshire Hathaway (Warren Buffett) in a ~$37 billion deal. Shareholders will be paid $235/share (a 21% premium to Friday’s closing price) in cash when the deal closes in the first quarter of 2016. PCP…
Signs of deflation have been popping up all over global asset markets for the past year, ever since the US dollar broke-out on its tear higher. US dollar index – 2 years But this doesn’t even tell the whole story. The US dollar index represents the value of the US dollar against a basket…
The S&P 500 has essentially flat-lined since March but we’ve been losing breadth, meaning fewer stocks are participating in the rally, as shown in the chart below. The black line shows the S&P 500 over the past 2 years and the green line shows the number of stocks in the S&P 500 trading above their…
I suppose I should define “safest” before giving my opinion. If we define safety as our confidence that the industry, business model or product will withstand the test of time, I believe the safest long-term investment theme is food. Think about it for a minute. Everyone eats food. Not everyone buys a smartphone, an electric…
I haven’t chimed in with my two cents on Greece yet but I figured you might be wondering what I think, and more importantly, how it might affect investment markets. It’s no secret that I’ve been pretty critical of the Eurozone the past few years. A monetary union without a fiscal union just cannot work…
It’s not every day the market screws up and offers us an opportunity like it’s doing today with Oracle, which is down around 8% (as of this writing) after reporting quarterly earnings last night. Apparently Wall Street isn’t happy that revenue and earnings missed their forecasts this quarter…? Just another example of Wall Street’s short-sightedness…
I’ve been reworking the stock holdings within the income allocation of portfolios all year. To offer some background, I break portfolio allocations into two segments, Growth and Income, and fit clients based on the amount of volatility that’s appropriate for their retirement/financial plan. These days, “Income” oriented investments don’t offer much in the way of…