Why zero interest rates are here to stay
It’d be wrong to interpret last week’s Reserve Bank decision to cut its cash rate to 0.10% as an emergency response to the COVID crisis. The implication would be that once the pandemic is controlled the economy will return to something like the pre-crisis “normal” and the ultra-low interest rates will end. In reality, in…
Is a flood of liquidity entering markets?
As interest rates creep lower and asset-buying programs expand, contrarian investors have been steamrollered by liquidity and momentum. Yet abundant liquidity and plausible storytelling can only sustain markets for so long, and every story needs an ending. We prefer to leave expensive technology businesses to others, while focusing on neglected long-duration businesses with proven earnings…
New and Upcoming IPOs for a New Normal
For month upon month long term investors have been subjected to an avalanche of opinion pieces suggesting life as they new it prior to the onset of the COVID 19 Pandemic would never return to “normal.” Instead there has been incessant speculation on what a “new normal” in a post pandemic world would look like,…
Super low interest rates come with side effects
Ultra-loose monetary policy could even be counterproductive for economies. Sitting on the desk of Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Philip Lowe most days when he arrives at work are letters from the public. Many are from retirees who have one complaint in this world of low interest rates. “It’s not uncommon for people to say…
Can Infant Formula Stocks Rebound?
The closing month of the third quarter of 2020 halted the upward movement of markets both here in Australia and in the US. On the last trading day of Q3 the ASX200 fell 2.29% to post both its first monthly loss since March as well as a decline for the quarter overall – dropping 1.39%….
US senate result could reverberate for decades
The US senate result could reverberate for decades if under Democrat control the filibuster goes. Any quest to alter the constitutional order would be more proof of how primary contests are destabilising US politics. Mitch McConnell, first elected to the US senate in 1984, became senate majority leader in 2015 when Republicans regained control of…
Mining Service Providers to Watch
Newcomers to share market investing emboldened by the dramatic reversal in market movements in late March of this year have to remain dazed and confused. Months of tracking market movements could easily lead to the conclusion that negative economic news matters little to profit-hungry investors. It is the future that counts and to a large…
Why gold is still a safe haven in times of crisis
“Gold” said famed investor Warren Buffett in 1998, “gets dug out of the ground in Africa or someplace, then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head.” Yet for all that, we…
Irrational Exuberance on Steroids
Investors old enough to remember the bursting of the dot.com bubble at the beginning of the 21st century may recall the observation made by former Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, that irrational exuberance explains a market driving asset valuations beyond their fundamental worth. When the March bear market abruptly ended, the emerging…
China and the US are headed towards a ‘decoupling’
But any rupture is likely to fall short of the separation the word implies. (Reading time: 4 min) The ‘Line of Actual Control’ is the name for the unformalised border that separates Indian-controlled and Chinese-controlled territory in the disputed area where the Asian neighbours meet and where in 1962 the pair fought a war. In…
