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This article takes a contrarian view, particularly on the debt, which I want to present to you.
He argues there are “diamonds in the rough”, which is almost always true.
I’m still quite negative on municipals in general, but it’s good to see the other point of view.
J
Put simply, you have to understand what the Risk is before you come up with bumper sticker phases like “if you watch the downside the upside takes care of itself”.
Interesting article…..
This week’s video is my 1st Quarter Review and my 2nd Quarter Preview.
The first quarter was good (yeah!), and I list the items I’ll be watching and thinking about for the 2nd quarter.
A must see video (if I do say so myself).
TRANSCRIPT:
Hi Clients and Friends, Mike Brady here. This is the first quarter review and second quarter pre-view for 2011.
Now, in general, the first quarter was a little bouncy in February, but overall a positive quarter; actually, a very strong and nice quarter. The indexes, which of course you can’t invest in indexes, but they’re something that you see in newspapers and TV, etc., that we refer to all the time, the stock market indexes in general were all positive sort of in the middle numbers, four, five, six, something like that. The big winner was the sector that is small cap around nine or ten percent for the first quarter, depending on which slice you look at. Corporate bonds were positive for the year, for the first quarter I should say. And that is good for them, two to three percent. Government bonds were pretty flat either zero or actually negative, between zero and one percent, once again depending on which slice and what duration you want to look at.
So for this second quarter, what’s going to happen? Oh, boy, that’s always a tricky one. We have to look at it, I think, week and month by month. Some of the things I will be paying attention to will be quantitative easing, ending in June. Quantitative easing, (QE2 is what we call it) has been an influx of capital into the markets and that is going to end in June. Also Bernanke is going to give his first ever press conference at the end of April and boy, I think if you’ve been watching my videos and reading my newsletters you know I’m not a big fan of Ben Bernanke, so I’m kind of curious what he’s going to say and well you know kind of what the reaction is to him.
I’m going to continue to watch for the real numbers. I’m becoming more and more of a proponent that what you read and what gets put out there is not really telling the full story. A great example would be unemployment. The unemployment rate is 8.8 percent right now which is supposed to be good news. But the U6, which is the unemployment number including people who have given up looking, is quite high, sixteen or seventeen percent. So, I’m going to continue to look at what the real numbers are, telling us the real data. Just one more example while I’m thinking of it is inflation. Inflation, the CPI, does not include food and oil, as if we don’t drive or eat. I mean that’s a goofy number. So what are the true numbers so that we can understand what the recovery is saying.
I’m going to continue to watch oil. Oil has really increased in the last three or four months or so. And as I mentioned at the beginning of the year oil can be a real sidetrack, a good de-railer for the economy if it increases. And it has increased quite a lot since the beginning of the year. I don’t have the number right in front of me but as I recall it was around $88, and now it is right around $113, or $114. So it has started to increase and that is of concern to me.
These are some of the things that I’m going to really watch very closely this second quarter. And of course, I encourage you to give me a call as we go through the quarter if there are any concerns or questions you might have about the impact of this or that on the markets and on your portfolio, etc.
My name is Mike Brady. My company is Generosity Wealth Management, The phone number is 303.747.6455. I am a registered representative with Cambridge Investment Research. And we’ll talk to you next week. Thank you bye bye.
I’
Europe continues to be sick and will slow down the global economy.
The worst with Europe is not over. It’s the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end.
What does this mean for you?
I’m not a fan of a large holding in Europe. Internationally, though, I continue to be impressed with some of the emerging markets out there. Irritatingly, Europe is being forced to address many fiscal imbalances we have here in the United States, but they’re just a number of years ahead of us in addressing them.
I continue to have a minimal to zero exposure to Europe for my clients.
F
Come on…..we’ve seen this before. It’s called the late 1990s. I don’t like it and am avoiding it like the plague.
Click on the link below for a more detailed article.
Like it or not, globalization is here to stay. Japan, and the impact on supply chains throughout the world, is only going to reinforce the move towards a diverse, diffused world economy.
In the coming years, we’ll see an even greater push toward interrelatedness amongst countries, and each country’s businesses will rely on many countries for their materials. Diversification of supply is key.
Japan is going to recover and recover quickly.
TRANSCRIPT:
Hi Clients and Friends, Mike Brady here.
This week I want to talk about globalization. It’s here to stay and Japan is just an example of why it’s going to stay. Periodically, I talk with people here in Boulder who think globalization is a bad thing. I’m not here to say that it is good or bad. I have my opinions, but now is not the time to get into that political discussion. But what I am here to say is that it is not going anywhere but more globalization.
Japan: Toyota and Honda, 68-72% of the parts for those companies are actually made outside of Japan. So they are going to continue to make automobiles. China and South Korea and other places that are getting their materials from Japan are having a little bit of supply issue, supply problems, for their products that they export to the rest of the world; or export back into Japan once it’s finished goods. And so, Japan and South Korea and frankly, much of the world is going to diversify, in my opinion, going to continue to diversify their supply chain. So that an event from one country does not disrupt it, they’re going to need 2, 3, 4, different supply chains, sources, for their goods as they distribute it into the rest of the world.
I do not believe, that Japan, a year from now a year from now, two years, five years from now, that we’re going to look back and say that this was a huge economic event that had this very negative impact. Japan as a country is the third largest economy. It is a very wealthy country. They’re very resilient people. And while this is very painful, what has happened, I think that Japan is going to pick itself up and pick itself up very quickly. In the meantime, countries that have relied upon Japan, and will continue to rely upon Japan will continue to rely upon Japan but also diversify into other countries.
So from an investor point of view, the question we might ask is how can we benefit from this trend of diffused supply chains, diffused need and globalization? And so that I think that is really the question that we need to ask ourselves.
I continue to believe that 2011, this year, will be a positive year for the stock markets. And frankly, I’m not changing that. Nothing that I’ve seen in the last three months has changed that opinion. In two or three months as the buying of the, from the, QE2 changes or stops, that will be another obstacle that we’ll have to watch very closely to see what happens.
Anyway, that’s what I’m thinking about this week. I hope you’re doing wonderful.
My name is Mike Brady. My company is Generosity Wealth Management. I am a registered rep with Cambridge Investment Research. My phone number is 303.747.6455. Hope you’re doing well. And I’ll talk to you next week, bye bye.