This is a regular question posed by investors and market commentators, but in many ways is also the most meaningless. This is because the relative merits of equities as an asset class owes more to the ebb and flow of liquidity to goose demand, rather than some theoretical notion of a ‘correct’ valuation that should […]
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A new year it may be, but don’t expect much improvement in the headline analysis of spurious government statistics. On Friday we had the December non-farm payroll figures. The headline net job additions was ‘only’ +148k in the month, which CNBC, the WSJ and other main media were quick to inform us was below the […]
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On balance, November’s non-farm payroll numbers were as good as might have been hoped for, at least for equities. Whilst the progress of the tax reforms, which offer to drop Federal corporation tax rates by 15ppts (from 35% to only 20%) are clearly more relevant to both valuations and FCF assumptions, the improved […]
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There’s something almost comical about the law of unintended consequences. After nearly a decade of central bank intervention and manipulation of the market pricing of capital, should we be surprised that Bitcoin is now worth more than Proctor & Gamble? Having destroyed the market’s pricing of risk and replaced it with the moral hazard of […]
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Never let a good hurricane go to waste. So when a couple turn up within a few weeks of each other (Harvey hitting Texas on 25th August and Irma skimming Western Florida on the 10th September) no one is going to take the estimated employment data for September as being particularly indicative of the underlying […]
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Can it get much worse for Theresa May? Having botched an unnecessary general election, her grand solution to the Brexit negotiations is basically to try and do nothing. Having been sucked into the EU’s negotiating agenda of pay now, talk later on trade (or perhaps not at all), her ‘Florence’ proposal is now to seek […]
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Slow start to the new fiscal year for FEDEX (fdx) and DIAGEO (dge_l). Fedex Q1 disappoints on cyber-attacks and hurricane headwinds, while Diageo blames a late Chinese New year and US spirits investment for a weak start to its FY18. Management innocent on all counts, of course ;-) Fedex – Q1 FY18: […]
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