Page 25
Investors have been somewhat more cautious on the corporate-debt sector lately, with spreads — which measure the yield advantage versus Treasuries — tight by historical standards. To be sure, the financial health of corporations in the investment-grade space continues to be quite strong. However, in a slow-growth macroeconomic environment, we believe it may prove challenging
A number of developments in early 2013, including the long deadlock in Italian politics following the March elections, and the brinksmanship surrounding the EU bailout for Cyprus’s banking system, were notable specifically because of the muted market reaction they elicited. These events were generally understood to be negative developments on the world stage, but for
Since January, much of the talk from the political class has revolved around sequestration, the other half of the fiscal cliff that mandated 2% across-the-board spending cuts. While the political rhetoric associated with those cuts often has painted them as catastrophic, we believe the fallout for most states is likely to be fairly benign. The
While the U.S. economy merits a degree of optimism, as the recovering housing sector has supported improvement in the labor market and consumer spending, we question the outlook for the balance of 2013. A key indicator in our research reveals that expectations are getting ahead of themselves. The Economic Surprise Index measures the difference between
The year began with a flourish in stocks, which soared more than 10% on a mix of fundamentals and optimism. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 Index set new records above levels they had last reached before the 2008 crisis. We view this advance somewhat skeptically, because the behavior of other asset
Analyzing dividend-paying stocks focuses on more than just yield. It’s important to differentiate companies that can simply support a dividend from those that can potentially grow the dividend in the short or long term.
With the automatic spending cuts, or sequestration, required by the Budget Control Act of 2011 still on track to go into effect starting Friday, March 1, we believe it’s important to keep the full impact in perspective. Even if we do go into a sequestration mode in the United States, or get bogged down in
Although some areas of the real estate market still have weaknesses, a number of factors are coming together to support the recovery in the housing market.
There is little question that interest rates would be significantly higher in the absence of Fed purchases. It is important to understand how potentially damaging a long-duration strategy could be in this environment. The duration, or sensitivity to rate movements, of a 10-year Treasury bond is about nine years, which means that an increase in