In May, we began talking bullishly about European stocks and put a position on for select accounts. As Buffett said about his recent European stock buys, the news hadn’t gotten better but the prices sure had. The valuations were absurdly low relative to what investors are paying for the US and Japan.  Price to earnings…

361 Capital portfolio manager, Blaine Rollins, CFA, previously manager of the Janus Fund, writes a weekly update looking back on major moves, macro-trends and economic data points. The 361 Capital Weekly Research Briefing summarizes the latest market news along with some interesting facts and a touch of humor. 361 Capital is a provider of alternative…

“We’re different because…”  In the investing business, advisors like to adopt stories and narratives as a kind of shorthand to express what they believe and how they deliver their product or service to clients. There is nothing inherently wrong with this most human of traits – neolithic man used cave paintings to describe their hunting…

Guess who won the post-crisis recovery? Guess who still rules the US economy and runs American capitalism, despite everything we have and haven’t learned over the years. Guess who is once again disproportionately represented in the US financial markets… From Bloomberg: Banks, brokers and insurance companies make up 16.8 percent of the S&P 500, almost double…

Savita Subramanian’s ‘Equity Client Flow Trends’ report from Bank of America Merrill Lynch has become one of my favorite regular reads. It gives you solid insight into what each of the four layers of investors are thinking and doing, despite what they tell the surveys. Subramanian’s quant strategy group looks at the net activity throughout the…

The opening salvo from Eric Peters’s excellent wknd notes letter: *** What a f’in train wreck. And like all tragedies, soon after you bury the broken bodies, bloodhounds first unearth incompetence. Then corruption. Kickbacks. Capital misallocation. It shouldn’t take long to pick up a scent. Spain has Earth’s second longest high-speed network; behind China. They…

Well, something I don’t hear many mention is that earnings are also hitting a new all-time high this year.

I hate the term “smart money” but I do like to discuss and monitor what big money is doing at all times. Because big money gets plenty of stuff wrong but it does move the market. Via Charts Etc, the big institutional money continues to flow out of Apple, despite its recent hare price recovery….

Conventional wisdom circa year-end 2012, winter 2013: Among the deepest cuts to government spending under the sequestration terms would be to the defense budget. Many defense stocks have been underperforming the market as a result of investor anxiety about spending cuts, and this trend could pick up momentum going forward if no deal is reached….