Factors Institutional Investors Are Favoring
Every year since 1989, Merrill Lynch surveys a few 100 institutional investors using a broad variety of quantitative, valuation, process and modeling questions. Their responses get summarized in a 39 chart, 27 page report. You can get a sense of the depth and breadth of the report in just a few charts — but overall,...
Is Cash the New Black?
Every year, American Express publishes an in depth “Survey of Affluence and Wealth in America.” The 2012 version is notable for the attitudinal differences between the top 1%, 10% and everyone else (aka the 90 or 99%). A few quick bullet points: • Incomes up 6% for top 1% in 2011. Slightly lower among everyone...
10 Tuesday AM Reads
My morning reading material: • Flash-Crash Story Looks More Like a Fairy Tale (Bloomberg) • Consumers Are Borrowing Again, Is it Here to Stay? (Northern Trust) • Chen Exposes the Communist Goliath (The Diplomat) • Austerity Faces Sharper Debate After European Elections (NYT) see also Merkel Is Cast as Thatcher’s Austerity Goddess (Bloomberg) • WTF?!?...
10 Monday PM Reads
My afternoon reading: • Lehman E-Mails Show Wall Street Arrogance Led to the Fall (Bloomberg) • Study Says Broker Rebates Cost Investors Billions (NYT) • Traders Being Accountable to Themselves (Trader Planet) • Zuckerberg: The Maturation of the Billionaire Boy-Man (NY Mag) • Customer Divide at MF Global (WSJ) • Enter The Pivot: The Critical...
Beijing/Shanghai iOS Penetration Rate
~~~ > What is iOS penetration (Apple’s iPhone and iPad) in all Chinese provinces and municipalities? Stenvall Skoeld & Company culled data from several sources, including China mobile research firm Umeng: “How long will it take before your average Chinese Zhou can expect to own a villa in the suburbs and two cars? A long...
Open Thread: U.S. Political Polarization
Fascinating set of charts from the quarterly J.P. Morgan Asset Management deck. Its as a good a time as any to open up the conversation: Why is Congress’ approval rating at record lows? Why are so many people at such political extremes? What say ye? > Click to enlarge: Source: Guide to the Markets, Q1,...
Montier on Peak Earnings
Earlier, I mentioned Jame’s Montier’s discussions of cyclical profit peaks and promised to post a few charts (below). You can find the full white paper here, excerpts follow. The key takeaway is that “GMO are firm believers in mean reversion; such record elevation in profit margins causes us much consternation.” All charts and commentary below...
Why We Must End Too Big to Fail—Now
> Be sure to check out the latest missive by Dallas Fed EVP and Director of Research Harvey Rosenblum on Why We Must End Too Big to Fail—Now — its titled Choosing the Road to Prosperity and its in the Think Tank. > Click to enlarge: ˜˜˜ Source: Choosing the Road to Prosperity Why We Must...
Military Balance 2012
For those people who are truly concerned about deficits — real Hawks, not deficit peacocks — should take a look at this chart from The International Institute for Strategic Studies. Look at the comparative defense budgets of various countries, versus what can only be described as the unique military budget of the USA; if you...
Why Using P/E Ratios Can Be Misleading
Société Générale’s Andrew Lapthorne lays out the danger of relying on P/E ratios. “The essential message is that although one is of course simply the inverse of the other, using P/E ratio instead of earnings yields can give dramatically different results when making historical valuation comparisons. This disparity between average P/E and average E/P is...
