What We’re Up Against

  A quarter of Americans surveyed could not correctly answer that the Earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around, according to a report out Friday from the National Science Foundation. The survey of 2,200 people in the United States was conducted by the NSF in 2012 and released on Friday at an…

S&P 500 Relative Value by Sector

Savita Subramanian’s latest S&P 500 Relative Value Cheat Sheet came out this week and the Equity and Quant Strategist at BofA Merrill Lynch notes the following: All ten sectors saw their absolute forward P/Es decline last month, while the relative forward P/E increased only for Utilities, Health Care and Tech. Utilities is now once again…

Annuity Boiler Rooms?

Last year $358 billion came out of 401(k)s into rollover IRAs and there’s another $2.1 trillion expected to follow between 2014 and 2018. This is money that’s going to require excellent stewardship – we’re living way longer than 70 years old these days. The insurance-industrial complex is well aware of these figure as are the…

This Week on TRB

Here were the most read posts on TRB this week, in case you missed them: Ack History Month Emerging Markets: Here Come the Bulls Flows Don’t Follow Value, They Follow Performance “Security. Safety. Stability.” Who are the Top 10 Hedge Fund Managers of All Time? The Chart That Wouldn’t Die    

Ack History Month

Look who’s making his comeback, a bit behind schedule but nevertheless, right on time. This week William Ackman, manager of the $12 billion hedge fund Pershing Square, did a Q&A at a charity benefit event and spoke freely about his portfolio rather than blaze through his customary deck of a few hundred slides. He’s got…

EM Investing: Past GDP Meaningless, Future GDP Invaluable

I’ve spent a bunch of my day going through what my friend Meb calls the “best research report of the year,” The Credit Suisse Global Investment Returns Yearbook for 2014. The centerpiece of the report is a reconstruction of all stock returns for both Emerging Markets and Developed Markets going back to 1900 by three…