Fed rate rise – Cui Bono?

After raising its Federal funds target range to 0.25-0.5% in December 2015, Yellen has waited exactly a year and now edged up rates a further +25bps as the target range is raised to 0.5-0.75%, while also signalling that these could rise to around 1.4% by the end of 2017, thereby suggesting three further +25bps increases […]

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Sky bid – keeping the narrative bogged down with the media plurality red herring

Reading this morning’s press reports on Murdoch’s £10.75 per share agreed offer to buy  out the outstanding 61% of Sky he doesn’t already own, one thing becomes clear. With the bid coming from 21st Century Fox this time rather than News Corp, the consensus narrative is that this is expected to reduce the regulatory risks […]

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Apple CEO pumps up Q4 sales expectations for the Watch after Q3 collapse

No sooner than IDC release estimated data for the top 5 global ‘wearable’ devices for the Q3 showing a -71% collapse in Apple Watch shipments for the period (see table below), than Apple’s CEO Tim Cook jumps straight back in with one of his now infamous selective disclosures to the press to talk the product […]

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What equity valuations might be trying to tell you!

Hang on, according to the ‘experts’, this wasn’t supposed to happen! Having been fed a diet of gloom by everyone from Hedgies (Bridgewater), Academics/Economists (Dartmouth/MITI/Krugman), Banks (Citi) and wealthy investors (Mark Cuban – see end for links) should Trump get elected, markets have done what they do best and confound the experts, with US equity […]

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Gartner Inc follow-up as US jobs data confirms softening trend for Info segment

Last month I flagged a warning on Gartner Inc.  Consensus forecasts for a sustained rate of revenue growth over the next two years are clearly wrong. The question is whether they are too high or too low. In the blog piece on the subject I highlighted the correlation of the group’s organic revenue record to […]

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If rates rise, it won’t have anything to do with the US jobs data

It’s the first Friday of the month again and I’ve woken to Punxsutawney Phil and predictions of imminent interest rate increases following the traditional release of the US non-farm payroll numbers; this time for November. Notwithstanding these are probably even less meaningful than normal given the Presidential elections at the beginning of the month it […]

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Vodafone – Recovery play or just a value trap?

Are super-low interest rates good for capital intensive businesses such as the Telcos? Intuitively, the answer seems obvious, in that lowering funding costs ought to improve the marginal returns from employing that capital. An analogy might be with fuel prices for airline stocks, with again a seemingly clear inverse relationship. In both cases however you might […]

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