If everyone wants their money back at the same time…

Liquidity issues in the high yield bond market have made front page news today, as expected. I don’t see the current pace of redemptions as something worth freaking out about, but awareness is probably a good idea as spreads widen and redemptions create a drying-up of demand for the $1.6 trillion asset class. The Wall…

The Rube Goldberg Machine

Where did this sudden spate of volatility come from? Journalists are pointing to Argentina and traders are citing various negative divergences, but I don’t believe that either of those explanations are legitimate, at least not in terms of the origin. Today I’ll explain the machinations of how the markets are moving now in terms of asset…

Chart o’ the Day: Stick with Large Caps

Oppenheimer’s technical analysts (and my pal) Ari Wald is out with an update on his bullish large cap thesis this morning. Back in April, he told clients of the firm to emphasize large caps over small caps in US equities and the call was a great one – small caps have drastically underperformed since then….

All Eyes on High Yield

This weekend’s Barron’s cover story was about what could go wrong in the markets thanks to the massively important ETF complex, which, as Rick Ferri points out in the story, has tripled in size since the Credit Crisis era. There are some really good points in the story, especially the stuff about how there are…

Real Investors Root for Down Markets

If we’ve got investing time horizons that span more than a decade (and the majority of us do), it is irrational for us to be rooting for new all-time highs. Real investors don’t get excited by perpetual new highs because they understand that it means lower expected returns on new money invested. They also understand that it…

School’s Out!

Congress on vacation. They managed to get a supplemental spending bill done for the humanitarian crisis at the border. It won’t pass the Senate and Obama won’t sign it, so, you know, job well done. Happy summer vacation / fundraising! Cartoon by Joel Pett, Lexington Herald-Reader  Cartoon by Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press