Goldman: Four Ways to Find Value in a Fairly Valued Market

From David Kostin’s GS Portfolio Strategy Research note this morning: Target: S&P 500 will rise 6% and reach 1900 at year-end 2014 Our forecast return reflects 8% growth in EPS to $116 coupled with an essentially flat forward P/E multiple near 15x. Looking further ahead, extended growth in sales, earnings, and the economy will lift…

The Robin Hood Investor’s Conference

Today we’re doing the Fast Money Halftime Report live from the first ever Robin Hood Investor’s Conference in midtown Manhattan. Robin Hood is a foundation dedicated to organizing and mobilizing the efforts and capital of Wall Street’s largest, most high-profile investors. They’ve given an ocean of money toward fighting poverty over the years and have…

Colin Quinn’s Epic Wall Street Rant

This went on yesterday morning. It’s scary how on the money a Wall Street outsider like Colin Quinn gets to the truth here. Pros: The degree to which you’ll be nodding your head will depend on how full of shit your job forces you to be in order to get through the day. The comedian,…

Is Monitoring Leverage the Key to all Crisis Avoidance?

A new paper by economists John Geanakoplos and Lasse Pedersen posits that if it is leverage that puts the whole financial system at risk, then it is leverage that we must monitor if we ever hope to predict or avoid crisis… Systemic  crises tend to  erupt when  highly  leveraged financial  institutions  are forced to deleverage, sending the economy into recession; leverage is a  central element of economic cycles and systemic risk. While traditionally the interest rate has been regarded as the single key feature of a loan, we argue that leverage is in fact a more important measure of systemic risk. We discuss how leverage can be monitored for assets, institutions, and individuals, and highlight the benefits of monitoring leverage. Our main conclusions are:  Monitoring …

Buy Wood.

GMO is out with its latest monthly asset class real returns forecast for this month. The system is largely predicated on mean reversion and so you’ll typically see the most loved sectors projected to have the worst returns (US small caps this go-round) for the future period. Barry and I are huge fans of Jeremy…