PIMCO - The New Neutral​​​​​​ 5-15min

Over the past 15 years, the global economy has operated under two different growth models. Between 1999 and 2007, the growth model operated through ever larger trade imbalances between emerging market and commodity exporting countries – who ran larger and larger surpluses – and a group of rich countries – first and foremost the U.S. – who ran larger and larger trade deficits. Global imbalances were then seen as a problem by some, but they were really a symptom of the global geographic distribution of aggregate supply and demand, with excess supply in the high-saving emerging market countries and excess demand in some low-saving rich countries (and with energy exporting countries doing quite well as they exported to both). These supply-demand and saving-investment imbalances generated huge international capital flows that were sufficient to bring global demand into line with abundant global supply of goods at something approximating the full employment of global resources. ... That growth model obviously broke down in the global financial crisis years of 2007–2009 as global imbalances shrunk in line with global aggregate demand. From 2009–2014, the global economy has operated under stimulus from “nontraditional” monetary policies that pushed policy rates to zero and ballooned central bank balance sheets through massive “chunks” of quantitative easing. Also, the global policymakers “went Keynesian” for a couple of years during and following the crisis by delivering a large dose of fiscal stimulus. The good news is that, as a result, the global economy avoided depression and deflation. But that’s all they did or could reasonably do. The reality is that now, five years after the global financial crisis, average growth in the global economy is modest and the level of global GDP remains below potential. The global economy has not as of today found a growth model that can generate and distribute global aggregate demand sufficient to absorb bountiful global aggregate supply. Unless and until it does, we will be operating in a multi-speed world with countries converging to historically modest trend rates of potential growth with low inflation. 0% neutral real policy rates for many developed and some developing countries will likely be the investment outcome.

The New Yorker - Dealer’s Hand: Why are so many people paying so much money for art? 5-15min

Ask David Zwirner. ... Zwirner, the son of a famous German dealer, opened his first gallery in 1993, in SoHo. Since then, he has risen to be one of the most prominent dealers in the world. He is not really a pioneer, in terms of the art he has championed, or the style in which he has presented it, or the people he has sold it to. He is, in many respects, one more boat on a rising tide. Still, the brightwork gleams. People often say that he’s angling to be his generation’s Larry Gagosian—every era has its dealer-king—but his approach is really nothing like Gagosian’s, or anyone else’s. He brings the calculating eye of an efficiency expert to the historically improvised hustle of buying and selling art objects. “He’s the new dynasty,” Gavin Brown, the New York gallerist, told me. “It’s the Norman conquest.”

Guggenheim - The Fed's Bind: Tapering, Timetables and Turmoil 5-15min

There are striking parallels between the dramatic recent sell-off in U.S. Treasuries and the Great Bond Crash of 1994. But the summer of volatility now facing financial markets is no doomsday scenario. Instead, it puts the U.S. Federal Reserve in a bind. Higher interest rates will reduce housing affordability, which is especially troublesome since housing is the primary locomotive of U.S. economic growth. That means the Fed, despite Ben Bernanke’s recently announced timetable, may be forced to expand or extend quantitative easing if the housing market’s response to recent events becomes more acute and starts to negatively affect the job market recovery.

Financial Times - Asset management hits record level < 5min

The animal spirits are stirring again in the markets as the asset management industry grows to a record level and shrugs off some of the debilitating effects of the financial crisis. ... The amount of money invested globally by asset managers has for the first time surpassed the highs before the 2007-08 crisis, according to Boston Consulting Group, the management consultants. ... Gary Shub, partner at BCG, agreed that animal spirits, a term used by economist John Maynard Keynes to describe positive actions because of instinctive optimism, had recovered in the markets, although he warned it was not a fully fledged revival.

MCM Capital - Macro-Agnosticism & the ‘Invisi-Bubble’ > 15min

Market bubbles are called bubbles for good reason. They form, they inflate, they grow to an unstably distorted size, and ultimately they undergo the effects of rapid decompression in search of equilibrium. In a word … they pop. And generally speaking, the bigger the bubble the bigger the bang. … Most of us are pretty good by now, we think, at spotting bubbles. After all, we know what they look like; we recognize their characteristics, don’t we? Maybe. Maybe not. Not all bubbles look or act the same. … Is there a bubble inflating again? … people often shrug their shoulders, scratch their heads, and simply accept that there must be good reasons why stocks have been on a roll. The average investor, after all, is at least one step removed from the markets for intangible assets and therefore has comparatively little experience to help avoid becoming their occasional Venus flytrap dinner. … When it comes to assessing the state of the real economy, on the other hand, most people are more circumspect and not so easily taken in. … this bubble was born of desperation, first by the misguided monetary policy regime and then by investors who are sure to become its unsuspecting victims as they look for return—any return—in all the wrong places. … Railing against Fed policy, of course, doesn’t change it. … we continue to believe it is possible—and necessary—to see both the forest and the trees in order to fulfill our highest obligation: to continue acting in the best interests of our clients. As noted investment manager Francois Sicart said recently: “The attitude of many professional investors toward the current market makes me think of a crowd enjoying a dance party on top of an active volcano. They know it is going to erupt but, instead of planning an exit, they keep dancing while trying to guess the exact date and time of the eruption.”

The New York Times - How Bitcoin is Disrupting Argentina’s Economy 5-15min

With its volatile currency and dysfunctional banks, the country is the perfect place to experiment with a new digital currency. ... His occupation is one of the world’s oldest, but it remains a conspicuous part of modern life in Argentina: Calle Florida, one of the main streets in downtown Buenos Aires, is crowded day and night with men and women singing out “cambio, cambio, cambio, casa de cambio,” to serve local residents who want to trade volatile pesos for more stable and transportable currencies like the dollar. For Castiglione, however, money-changing means converting pesos and dollars into Bitcoin, a virtual currency, and vice versa. ... That afternoon, a plump 48-year-old musician was one of several customers to drop by the rented room. A German customer had paid the musician in Bitcoin for some freelance compositions, and the musician needed to turn them into dollars. Castiglione joked about the corruption of Argentine politics as he peeled off five $100 bills, which he was trading for a little more than 1.5 Bitcoins, and gave them to his client. The musician did not hand over anything in return; before showing up, he had transferred the Bitcoins — in essence, digital tokens that exist only as entries in a digital ledger — from his Bitcoin address to Castiglione’s. Had the German client instead sent euros to a bank in Argentina, the musician would have been required to fill out a form to receive payment and, as a result of the country’s currency controls, sacrificed roughly 30 percent of his earnings to change his euros into pesos. Bitcoin makes it easier to move money the other way too. The day before, the owner of a small manufacturing company bought $20,000 worth of Bitcoin from Castiglione in order to get his money to the United States, where he needed to pay a vendor, a transaction far easier and less expensive than moving funds through Argentine banks. ... Avalancha offers customers a 10 percent discount when they use the virtual currency, because accepting credit cards generally ends up costing Avalancha more than 10 percent as a result of the vagaries of the Argentine financial system.

Caixin - Cracking Down on Bond Market's Knotty Traders < 5min

It was a typical workday morning at Wanjia Asset Management Co. in Shanghai's downtown financial district, but the firm's star bond trader Zou Yu was not at his desk. … Zou, 31, had mysteriously failed to report for his job as head of Wanjia's fixed-income department. And his whereabouts remained unknown until five days later when the firm, on April 16, announced that the police had taken Zou into custody for alleged, unspecified financial crimes. … Zou thus joined a growing list of allegedly unsavory bond traders, securities brokers, bankers and fund managers nabbed by authorities this year in their effort to stop illegal deal-making on the nation's interbank bond market.

SocGen - In the mood for loans: The keys to discovering five new asset classes > 15min

The asset management industry is about to experience another shake-up, as the investment universe expands to include new asset classes that involve direct loans to the economy rather than financial securities. … This report provides an insight into a new world of unlisted assets. Just as there is a market for private equity (unlisted shares), a market for private bonds and loans is developing as a result of the current large-scale disintermediation process. The report is intended to be instructive and seeks to explain this market using simple language. The editorial covers issues arising from macroeconomic disintermediation in the US and Europe, but also takes a microeconomic view by looking at the asset management industry in Europe, the US and Japan.
In this report, we look at five markets through which investors can lend directly to the economy, each corresponding to a new asset class:
1) Loans guaranteed by export finance agencies
2) Commercial real-estate loans
3) Loans for financing energy-related projects
4) Loans for financing transport-related projects
5) Loans to SMEs and intermediate-sized enterprises (ETIs)

Institutional Investor - The Rise of the Tech Model May Soon Make You Obsolete 5-15min

Machine learning, artificial intelligence and other technological advances are transforming how pensions, endowments, sovereign funds and other institutions manage their assets. ... Will the financial services industry soon be challenged by technology entrepreneurs with little initial - or no exclusive - interest in the investment business? ... The hot technologies being developed today will offer unparalleled insight into the complex world around us, and the applications to the entire domain of finance and investing are countless. ... One example: The ascendance of nonbiological intelligence means computing systems will learn and process many types of inputs far faster than even the most-expert individuals. Once experts partner with the systems, these man-machine teams will become extremely competent at rules-based goal seeking. The days of using scarce computing resources to model complex systems - backcasting, calibrating, validating and eventually forecasting - are nearly over. ... a growing number of computing systems and technologies will empower people, organizations, networks and information in transformative ways. Service industries will be particularly affected, as they often require human, labor-intensive analytics and networking scale. But if technologies can help people network and analyze faster and better, some of the companies in the industries that provide these services will face an existential challenge. As with the rise of computing and the Internet, we expect new technologies in the coming decade to challenge service industries, such as finance, in ways that few people today appreciate.

Hussman Funds - The Grand Superstition < 5min

In 1948, the behaviorist B.F. Skinner reported an experiment in which pigeons were presented with food at fixed intervals, with no relationship to any given pigeon’s behavior. Despite that lack of relationship, most of the pigeons developed distinct superstitious rituals and maneuvers, apparently believing that these actions resulted in food. As Skinner reported, “Their appearance as the result of accidental correlations with the presentation of the stimulus is unmistakable.” ... Superstition is a by-product of the search for patterns between events – usually occurring in close proximity. This kind of search for patterns is essential for the continuation of a species, but it also lends itself to false beliefs. As Foster and Kokko (2009) put it, “The inability of individuals – human or otherwise – to assign causal probabilities to all sets of events that occur around them… will often force them to make many incorrect causal associations, in order to establish those that are essential for survival.” ... The ability to infer cause and effect, based on the frequency with which one event co-occurs with some other event, is called “adaptive” or “Bayesian” learning. Humans, pigeons, and many animals have this ability to learn relationships in their world. Still, one thing that separates humans from animals is the ability to evaluate whether there is really any actual mechanistic link between cause and effect. When we stop looking for those links, and believe that one thing causes another because “it just does” – we give up the benefits of human intelligence and exchange them for the reflexive impulses of lemmings, sheep, and pigeons.

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GMO - Price-Insensitive Sellers (Inker) & Ten Quick Topics to Ruin Your Summer (Grantham) > 15min

The last decade has seen an extraordinary rise in the importance of a unique class of investor. Generally referred to as “price-insensitive buyers,” these are asset owners for whom the expected returns of the assets they buy are not a primary consideration in their purchase decisions. Such buyers have been the explanation behind a whole series of market price movements that otherwise have not seemed to make sense in a historical context. In today’s world, where prices of all sorts of assets are trading far above historical norms, it is worth recognizing that investors prepared to buy assets without regard to the price of those assets may also find themselves in a position to sell those assets without regard to price as well. This potential is compounded by the reduction in liquidity in markets around the world, which has been driven by tighter regulation of financial institutions, and, paradoxically, a greater desire for liquidity on the part of market participants. Making matters worse, in order to see massive changes in the price of a security, you don’t need the price-insensitive buyer to become a seller. You merely need him to cease being the marginal buyer. If price-insensitive buyers actually become price-insensitive sellers, it becomes possible that price falls could take asset prices significantly below historical norms. This is not to suggest that such an event is inevitable, still less is it an attempt to predict in which assets and when it will occur, but anyone conditioned to think that these investors provide a permanent support for the markets should be aware that the support may at some point be taken away.

GMO - The Idolatry of Interest Rates Part II: Financial Heresy > 15min

In this essay I want to build on some of the ideas that were developed in my last essay specifically as they pertain to thinking about asset markets. The most obvious place to start is with the idea that the natural rate of interest is a myth. Accepting this idea has many ramifications for the way in which one conducts asset pricing. ... Perhaps the clearest implication from my previous essay with respect to investing is that the cash rate is potentially unanchored. That is to say, without a natural rate it isn’t obvious what cash rate one should expect to see in the long term. ... If, like any number of my colleagues, you don’t believe a word I’ve written (and quite possibly think that I either have escaped from or belong in an asylum), then let me leave you with one last chart. Even if you believe that real interest rates do matter for equity market valuations, and, hence, that lower real rates justify higher sustainable levels of P/E, you still need to ask yourself the following question: Would I need to believe that today’s U.S. equity market valuations represent fair value?

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PIMCO - The Three Gluts < 5min

With this general framework in mind, here’s how I’ve been thinking about the global macro outlook for a while: It is driven by the interaction among what I call the “three gluts”: the savings glut, the oil glut and the money glut. While the global savings glut is likely the main secular force behind the global environment of low growth, lowflation and low interest rates, both the oil and the money glut should help lift demand growth, inflation and thus interest rates from their current depressed levels over the cyclical horizon. ... Why is it, to simplify further, that everybody wants to save more but nobody wants to invest? ... The oil glut helps to mitigate the depressing impact of the savings glut on consumer demand by shifting income from oil producers, who have a high propensity to save, to consumers, who typically spend most of their income. ... We expect more monetary easing to come, particularly in China and in many commodity-producing countries, so the global money glut, which is already increasing due to heavyweights like the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan executing their asset purchase programs, will swell further.

FRBSF - Is China’s Growth Miracle Over? < 5min

The recent slowdown in China’s growth has caused concern about its long-term growth prospects. Evidence suggests that, before 2008, China’s growth miracle was driven primarily by productivity improvement following economic policy reforms. Since 2008, however, growth has become more dependent on investment and overall growth has slowed. If the recent reform plans can successfully address the country’s structural imbalances, China could maintain a solid growth rate that might help smooth its transition to high-income status. ... Theory suggests that three factors contribute to economic growth: capital accumulation, labor force expansion, and productivity improvement. ... China’s growth miracle since the early 1980s has significantly raised the standards of living in China. It has also made China an increasingly important contributor to world economic growth and a large and growing market for U.S. exports. The rapid growth was driven primarily by productivity gains and capital investment. The recent growth slowdown has raised the concern that China’s growth miracle could be ending.

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Absolute Return Partners - Doodles from an eventful summer 5-15min

Something else must be driving the fall in Chinese equities. ... What could that be? Have China’s banks overextended themselves more recently? Central planning or not, as we all learned in 2008, a surge in shadow banking can lead to terrible things. ... I am no expert on China, but it is very tempting to conclude that the Chinese gambling spirit has simply migrated from Macau to Shanghai. ... Relative to 1999, when the euro was first introduced as an accounting currency, Greek workers had at one point (around 2009-10) enjoyed almost twice the wage growth compared to the average German worker. Although much of the advantage has since been given up, Greek workers have still out performed their German colleagues since the introduction of the euro – at least as far as wage growth is concerned ... Ukraine, the Middle East and Puerto Rico are all in the dumps – but for three very different reasons. ... the deflation talk is likely to blossom up again, and several countries on either side of the Atlantic could be flirting with recession later this year or early next. Consequently, yields on long bonds could fall further, and stock markets may be in troubled waters for a while. I don’t expect this to be anywhere nearly as bad as 2008, though. It is a normal cyclical downturn, which may not even be strong enough to be classified as a recession. But a slowdown it is. ... I think the U.S. economy will substantially outperform most other OECD economies over the medium as well as the long term – even if there is a modest cyclical slowdown just around the corner.

Politico - China: The new Spanish Empire? < 5min

Though China has been the global economic star of the last low-growth decade, it remains a totalitarian dictatorship, with its economy shrouded in state secrecy. What we’re encountering in this crisis is the spectacle of a closed society colliding with the forces of complex, free-market capitalism. If we look beyond China, we can find a long history of these collisions, dating back hundreds of years, as both closed societies and capitalism evolved and became more complex. And the history has a clear but unsettling lesson to offer: When such a collision happens, it’s a moment to genuinely worry. ... Since the dawn of capitalism, closed societies with repressive governments have — much like China — been capable of remarkable growth and innovation. Sixteenth-century Spain was a great imperial power, with a massive navy and extensive industry such as shipbuilding and mining. One could say the same thing about Louis XIV’s France during the 17th century, which also had vast wealth, burgeoning industry and a sprawling empire. ... But both countries were also secretive, absolute monarchies, and they found themselves thrust into competition with the freer countries Holland and Great Britain. Holland, in particular, with a government that didn’t try to control information, became the information center of Europe — the place traders went to find out vital information which they then used as the basis of their projects and investments. The large empires, on the other hand, had economies so centrally planned that the monarch himself would often make detailed economic decisions. As these secretive monarchies tried to prop up their economies, they ended up in unsustainable positions that invariably led to bankruptcy, collapse and conflict. ... China is a new case, for it has mixed capitalism and totalitarianism in a unique way. ... The government may not be able to control the stock market, but it does successfully keep a veil over state finances. This is what closed, authoritarian governments have done since the 16th century. ... what we are seeing in this current financial crisis is likely to be only the beginning of the political and societal crisis brought about by a dictatorship’s efforts to simulate the performance of a capitalist economy — but one that only grows. ... There is no historical example of a closed imperial economy facing large capital-driven, open states and sustainably competing over a long term.

Rolling Stone - The Rise and Fall of a Bitcoin Kingpin 5-15min

How a bullied geek forged an empire out of digital currency, and became a suspect in a half-billion-dollar heist ... During his reign, bitcoin, the leading form of virtual currency, rose in value from approximately a quarter to more than $1,200. The Wall Street Journal estimated that at one point Mt. Gox was processing 80 percent of all bitcoin transactions in the world. At its peak, the company traded more than $4 million a month. ... in February 2014, it was discovered that a half-billion dollars worth of bitcoins simply vanished from Karpeles' exchange, leaving customers around the world unable to withdraw their funds. It's the largest online heist in history. (Estimates vary on the exact amount. Many have reported $450 million; Karpeles says it could be as high as $650 million.) Some — including even those who worked closely with Karpeles — suspected it was an inside job. ... Mt. Gox was originally a site McCaleb had made for people to exchange Magic cards (thus the name — Magic: the Gathering Online Exchange, or Mt. Gox for short). But by July 2010, he'd devoted it to bitcoin instead, setting it up as the currency's first online brokerage ... According to Karpeles, the problem stemmed from what's called a "transaction malleability," a software flaw that allowed people on the outside to manipulate the bitcoin transactions and steal money from the exchange. At first, he tells me, he had no idea how much bitcoin was missing, but the deeper he dug, the worse it became

Oaktree - It's Not Easy 5-15min

Markets are meeting places where people come together (not necessarily physically) to exchange one thing (usually money) for another. Markets have a number of functions, one of which is to eliminate opportunities for excess returns. ... The bottom line is that first- level thinkers see what’s on the surface, react to it simplistically, and buy or sell on the basis of their reactions. They don’t understand their setting as a marketplace where asset prices reflect and depend on the expectations of the participants. They ignore the part that others play in how prices change. And they fail to understand the implications of all this for the route to success. ... The investor’s basic goal of buying desirable assets at fair prices is sensible and straightforward. But the deeper you look, the more you see how many aspects of successful investing are counterintuitive and how much of what seems obvious is wrong. ... The truth is, the best buys are usually found in the things most people don’t understand or believe in. These might be securities, investment approaches or investing concepts, but the fact that something isn’t widely accepted usually serves as a green light to those who’re perceptive (and contrary) enough to see it. ... Confidence is one of the key emotions, and I attribute a lot of the market’s recent volatility to a swing from too much of it a short while ago to too little more recently. The swing may have resulted from disillusionment: it’s particularly painful when investors recognize that they know far less than they had thought about how the world works.

Bloomberg - Blythe Masters Tells Banks the Blockchain Changes Everything 5-15min

In a matter of months, this word, blockchain, has gone viral on trading floors and in the executive suites of banks and brokerages on both sides of the Atlantic. You can’t attend a finance conference these days without hearing it mentioned on a panel or at a reception or even in the loo. At a recent blockchain confab in London’s hip East End, the host asked if there were any bankers in the room. More than half the audience members, all dressed in suits, raised their hands. ... Now, everyone’s trying to figure out whether the blockchain is just so much hype or if Masters’s firm and other startups are really going to change the systems that process trillions of dollars in securities trades. When investors buy and sell syndicated loans or derivatives or move money around the world, they must cope with opaque and clunky back-office processes that rely on negotiated contracts between buyers and sellers, lots of phone calls, lots of lawyers, and even the occasional fax. It still takes almost 20 days, on average, to settle syndicated loan trades. ... A June report backed by Santander InnoVentures, the Spanish bank’s fintech investment fund, estimated the blockchain could save lenders up to $20 billion annually in settlement, regulatory, and cross-border payment costs. ... Venture capitalists plowed $400 million into dozens of digital currency startups in the first six months of this year, a fourfold jump from all of 2013, according to industry news site CoinDesk.

McKinsey - Playing to win: The new global competition for corporate profits [Executive Summary] 5-15min

From 1980 to 2013, vast markets opened around the world while corporate-tax rates, borrowing costs, and the price of labor, equipment, and technology all fell. The net profits posted by the world’s largest companies more than tripled in real terms from $2 trillion in 1980 to $7.2 trillion by 2013,1 pushing corporate profits as a share of global GDP from 7.6 percent to almost 10 percent. Today, companies from advanced economies still earn more than two-thirds of global profits, and Western firms are the world’s most profitable. Multinationals have benefited from rising consumption and industrial investment, the availability of low-cost labor, and more globalized supply chains. ... But there are indications of a very significant change in the nature of global competition and the economic environment. While global revenue could increase by some 40 percent, reaching $185 trillion by 2025, profit growth is coming under pressure. This could cause the real-growth rate for the corporate-profit pool to fall from around 5 percent to 1 percent, practically the same share as in 1980, before the boom began. ... Profits are shifting from heavy industry to idea-intensive sectors that revolve around R&D, brands, software, and algorithms. Sectors such as finance, information technology, media, and pharmaceuticals—which have the highest margins—are developing a winner-take-all dynamic, with a wide gap between the most profitable companies and everyone else. Meanwhile, margins are being squeezed in capital-intensive industries, where operational efficiency has become critical. ... As profit growth slows, there will be more companies fighting for a smaller slice of the pie, and incumbent industry leaders cannot focus simply on defending their market niche.

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Janus - Saved by Zero < 5min

So the Fed has chosen to hold off on their goal of normalizing interest rates and the ECB has countered with the threat of extending their scheduled QE with more checks and more negative interest rates and the investment community wonders how long can this keep goin’ on. For a long time I suppose, as evidenced by history at least. ... zero bound interest rates destroy the savings function of capitalism, which is a necessary and in fact synchronous component of investment. Why that is true is not immediately apparent. If companies can borrow close to zero, why wouldn’t they invest the proceeds in the real economy? The evidence of recent years is that they have not. Instead they have plowed trillions into the financial economy as they buy back their own stock with a seemingly safe tax advantaged arbitrage. But more importantly, zero destroys existing business models such as life insurance company balance sheets and pension funds, which in turn are expected to use the proceeds to pay benefits for an aging boomer society. These assumed liabilities were based on the assumption that a balanced portfolio of stocks and bonds would return 7-8% over the long term. Now with corporate bonds at 2-3%, it is obvious that to pay for future health, retirement and insurance related benefits, stocks must appreciate by 10% a year to meet the targeted assumption. That, of course, is a stretch of some accountant’s or actuary’s imagination.

Bloomberg - Was Tom Hayes Running the Biggest Financial Conspiracy in History? (Or just taking the fall for one?) 5-15min

Fixations are a symptom of Asperger’s, along with social problems, elevated stress, and a propensity for numbers over words. The kids in Winchester bullied him for it. Hayes remained a peripheral figure in college, at the University of Nottingham. While his fellow students took their summer holidays, he paid for school by cleaning pots and lugging kitchen supplies for £2.70 an hour. ... Seeking better money, Hayes won an internship at UBS in London. After graduating, in 2001, he joined Royal Bank of Scotland as a trainee on the interest rate derivatives desk. For 20 minutes a day, as a reward for making the tea and collecting dry cleaning, he was allowed to ask the traders anything he wanted. It was an epiphany. ... On the rare occasions he joined other bankers on their nights out, he stuck to hot chocolate. They called him “Tommy Chocolate” and blurted out Rain Man quotes like “Qantas never crashed” as Hayes walked the trading floor. He was bad at banter, given to taking quips and digs at face value. The superhero duvet was a particular point of derision. The bedding was perfectly adequate, Hayes thought; he didn’t see the point in buying another one. ... Not everyone in finance was a jerk. Hayes made a few friends, and he found that his machine-gun approach to messaging and trading made him a favorite among brokers, who didn’t care where a trader had gone to school as long as he brought them deals. ... His M.O. was to trade constantly, picking up snippets of information, racking up commissions as a market maker, and building a persona as a high-volume, high-stakes risk-taker. ... Libor was a component in securities ranging from U.S. student loans and credit cards to Kazakh gas futures, but it was determined each day by just a handful of distracted, guesstimating individuals.

Absolute Return Partners - The Real Burden of Low Interest Rates 5-15min

My point is different. Low interest rates for an extended period of time don’t damage economic growth directly, but they cause damage in a multiple of other ways – a point almost universally missed by the critics. That is what this month’s Absolute Return Letter is all about. ... central bank action has had the effect of de-linking equities from the global growth cycle, as equity investors have chosen to blatantly ignore the fall in global trade in favour of more risk-taking at the back of accommodating central banks. Risk-on, risk-off has miraculously turned into risk-on, risk-on. “Don’t fight the Fed”, as they say, and equity investors have obviously chosen not to. ... First and foremost, returns are going to remain subdued because GDP growth will stay low for a long time to come. Demographic factors, productivity factors and mountains of debt in the majority of countries all point in the same direction, and that is towards below average economic growth. ... The most structural of those factors – demographics – will remain a negative for the U.S. economy for another 10-15 years, whilst economic growth in the euro zone and Japan will be negatively affected by demographics until at least 2050. This does not imply that there cannot be extraordinarily good years every now and then, but the average growth rate will almost certainly be low, causing interest rates to stay relatively low for a lot longer than most expect and corporate earnings to disappoint as well.

KUNC - When The Alpaca Bubble Burst, Breeders Paid The Price < 5min

Known for their calm temperaments and soft fleece, alpacas looked like the next hot thing to backyard farmers. The market was frenetic, with some top of the line animals selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars. ... But the bubble burst, leaving thousands of alpaca breeders with near-worthless herds. Today, craigslist posts across the country advertise “herd liquidations” and going out of business deals on alpacas, some selling for as low as a dollar. ... They bought in at the height of the bubble, when it was commonplace for alpacas to sell for several thousand dollars. The couple started breeding and selling the offspring. ... Back in the 1980s you’d really only find them in zoos. Now there’s close to 150,000 in the U.S. ... Even late night TV commercials, sandwiched between infomercials, touted the animals’ ability to pad a retiree’s income. ... “The fundamental fact is that in this country, an alpaca, as an asset, an income-producing asset, is worthless. It has no value at all,” Sexton says. “The product it produces, 6 to 8 pounds of alpaca fiber a year, is worth less than what it costs to feed, medicate, and house the animal.”

Janus Capital - Ides 5-15min

Beware the Ides of March, or the Ides of any month in 2015 for that matter. When the year is done, there will be minus signs in front of returns for many asset classes. The good times are over. ... Timing the end of an asset bull market is nearly always an impossible task, and that is one reason why most market observers don’t do it. The other reason is that most investors are optimists by historical experience or simply human nature, and it never serves their business interests to forecast a decline in the price of the product that they sell. Nevertheless, there comes a time when common sense must recognize that the king has no clothes, or at least that he is down to his Fruit of the Loom briefs, when it comes to future expectations for asset returns. Now is that time and hopefully the next 12 monthly “Ides” will provide some air cover for me in terms of an inflection point. ... Even with the recognition of the Minsky Moment in 2008 and his commonsensical reflection that “stability ultimately leads to instability,” investors have continued to assume that monetary (and at times fiscal) policy could contain the long-term business cycle and produce continuing prosperity for investors in a multitude of asset classes both domestically and externally in emerging markets. ... If real growth in most developed and highly levered economies cannot be normalized with monetary policy at the zero bound, then investors will ultimately seek alternative havens. Not immediately, but at the margin, credit and assets are exchanged for figurative and sometimes literal money in a mattress. As it does, the system delevers, as cash at the core or real assets at the exterior become the more desirable holding. The secular fertilization of credit creation and the wonders of the debt supercycle may cease to work as intended at the zero bound.