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One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of March thaw, is the Spring.
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Author Archives: Investment Strategy Group
Heard Off The Street: Deconstructing the World of Warren Buffett
In a recent paper, Andrea Frazzini, David Kabiller and Lasse H. Pederson deconstruct the returns of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and, along the way, remind, us of some important rules for long term investment success. Read More
Heard Off The Street: Dealing with Dividends
Dividends really captured headlines last year as dividend-paying companies outperformed non-dividend-paying companies. In fact, the 100 highest dividend-yielding (dividends divided by price) companies in the S&P 500 Index, were up almost 9% last year versus the overall index’s 2% gain.. Read More
Heard Off The Street: Warren Buffett Invests Like A Girl – Should You?
“Warren Buffett invests like a girl,” claims author LouAnn Lofton in a 2011 book entitled – not surprisingly – Warren Buffett Invests Like a Girl. Brad Barber of the University of California, Davis, and Terrance Odean of UC Berkeley surveyed 35,000 self-directed accounts. Read More
Heard Off The Street: Real Assets – Private or Public?
Investor interest in “real assets” has risen relentlessly during the financial crisis and its aftermath. By real assets we mean claims on the value of tangible items such as timber, oil, soybeans, copper and the like (as well as the companies that own them) or claims on changes in the value of inflation-linked assets (such as Treasury inflation-protected securities, or TIPS). Read More
Heard Off the Street: A Return to Normalcy … Relatively Speaking
Over the last few weeks, we have started to think that things might work out better here in the US than most people currently expect. This brighter future would emerge from the confluence of two unrelated, but equally important, developments. Read More
Heard Off the Street: Mortgage Forgiveness – And an Unexpected Silver Lining
The drumbeat for a wholesale write-down of mortgage principal is getting louder. Somewhere between 20 percent and 30 percent of US mortgage holders are underwater. Many will default, leaving their homes to be dumped on the market in foreclosure sales. Read More
Heard Off The Street: What’s Up?
The most widely used emerging market stock index is the MSCI EM Index. For the 12 months ended in September 2011, this index returned ‐16% in dollar terms. Over that same period, the S&P 500 returned +4%. Read More
What’s A Central Bank To Do?
As the economy continues to soften and fiscal stimulus morphs into fiscal austerity, the Federal Reserve must decide whether the US economy can stand on its own, or whether the central bank must, once again, intervene actively to prop up the economy. Read More
More on the Decoupling of the Macro from the Micro
The US economy has slowed significantly in recent months compared to late 2010 and early 2011. We’re not forecasting a recession … yet. But we are talking about a marked deceleration in the growth rate of our gross domestic product. Read More
The US Bond Market: Déjà Vu Once More
For the last couple of years, the US bond market has been batted back and forth by deflation and inflation fears. One consequence has been a lot of “noise” in the data – a racket that it may be best to ignore. Read More
Heard Off The Street: Whither Rates?
This article was prepared by Contango Capital Advisor’s Investment Strategy Group. Contango Capital Advisors is an affiliate of Zions Direct. When will the Federal Reserve start raising interest rates? What do you think about inflation? These are the two most … Read More
Pondering the Fate of Inflation
For some time, we have forecast that inflation would return to relatively normal levels in 2011. In fact, we expect core inflation (inflation excluding food and energy) to rise from its near-zero year-over-year rate to closer to 2%. Read More
