Over the last month, we have begun to see financial stocks outperform the overall market.  If one was to ask why, most market participants would say that the perception that interest rate hikes are more likely to be forthcoming in 2016 is driving the stocks.  In a market where short-termism is the status quo, these...Read More

July 29th, the Federal Reserve announced the results of the CCAR process including the requested capital return actions for the big banks. Unsurprisingly to those that have been reading this newsletter, the results were very good and we have seen an influx of dramatic dividend increases and stock buybacks. Below I’ll outline a few of...Read More

Last Thursday’s Brexit vote led to a historically nightmarish day in the financial markets: Indexes across the globe were down between 3-10%. The British pound dropped from a high of $1.50 to $1.32, before finally recovering to $1.37, down an enormous 9% for the currency. European banks stocks were down between 15 and 20%. S....Read More

  Since the extremely weak May jobs report, interest rates have plummeted across the globe. There are now over $10 trillion in bonds that are trading at negative interest rates. This is unprecedented as the buyers of these bonds are guaranteeing themselves losses if they hold until maturity. This has pushed asset prices up as...Read More

It has been an interesting few weeks. While Federal Reserve officials have been hyping up the possibility of raising interest rates in June or July, Friday’s incredibly poor jobs report seems likely to delay any hike until September at the earliest. For many short-term oriented traders, bank stocks have become a trading tool to speculate...Read More

The basic tenets to value investing and margin of safety are the following: Every stock is a fractional share of an actual business. Every business or stock has an “intrinsic value.” The “intrinsic value” of a business generally changes at a much slower rate than the price of a publicly traded stock can change. Over...Read More

When markets become volatile my job gets a lot more exciting and this year is off to a good start, so I thought I’d continue the education process.  Emerging markets are experiencing extreme volatility out of concerns that money is flowing out of their economies, making them unable to pay off debt in U.S. dollars. ...Read More

This article rightfully brings attention to the high possibility that tax rates on dividends will be increasing next year.  With bond yields so low for highly rated companies it does make some sense to issue debt and to pay it out to shareholders, and then over the next years pay back the loans by offering...Read More

How to Use Dividends, Fixed Income, and Options to Supplement Your Income Lackluster economic growth and a severe financial crisis in Europe, have forced the Federal Reserve and ECB to keep interest rates near record lows.  This penalizes retirees and other savers whom are reliant on income generated from their investments to maintain or improve...Read More

This was an exceptional interview on Bloomberg with Morgan Stanley (MS) CEO James Gorman.  Gorman correctly understands the global nature of the financial industry and the benefits of scale necessary to compete on that global level.  It is extremely obvious that the sum of the parts of these banks are greater than the current market...Read More