Bonds & Interest Rates
The world of fixed income trading has been extremely volatile lately. Rates have not only spiked in the Treasury market but borrowing costs in money markets have also become extremely disconcerting. The residual effects from Quantitative Tightening, which ended just this past July, are wreaking havoc on the liquidity in bond markets. Ironically, the Fed’s erstwhile rate hikes and its QT program–what Fed Chairs described as running in the background and like watching paint dry—turned out to be the catalyst for a freeze in the junk-bond market in December of 2018 and is now causing major disruption in the Repo market.
This illustrates clearly the tenuous nature of the bond bubble and that it will someday implode like a supernova—sending yields skyrocketing on a long-term basis. However, it most likely does not yet mark the start of the epoch debt bubble debacle that is in store. We will need a surge of inflation expectations, or the credit markets to shut down on a protracted basis for that to occur. We are moving closer to that eventuality every day….CLICK for complete
It turns out that automated portfolio advice is not the Field of Dreams. “If you build it, they will come,” has not worked out for the robo-advisory industry — yet.
Just a few years ago, prognosticators gazed into their crystal balls and predicted that investors would pour their money into robo-advisors. In 2016, KPMG projected that assets under management would be $1.5 trillion in 2019 and $2.2 trillion in 2020. Juniper Research expects assets under management worldwide to hit $4.1 trillion in 2022. However, that is nowhere close to what’s happening, and these projections seem to have fallen victim to the First Law of Forecasting: Give them a number, or give them a date, but never both.
According to a variety of analysts, there is considerably less than $1 trillion worldwide managed by robo-advisors as of May 2019, and the $2.2 trillion mark won’t be reached until 2022, according to some optimistic forecasts. Backend Benchmarking says $440 billion is managed by robo-advisory services as of mid-2019, while the Aite Group says it’s in the $350 billion range. Last fall, the research group Autonomous NEXT estimated that the market encompassed $660 billion in assets. To keep these figures in perspective, there is an estimated $22 trillion in investable assets out there–with over $9 trillion sitting in cash accounts, uninvested….CLICK for complete article
Micron Technology, Inc. shares are down 1.9% in the past week ahead of the memory giant’s earnings report expected out on Thursday afternoon. Some large option traders appear to have low expectations for Micron earnings.
Of the eight total large Micron option trades on Wednesday morning, only one involved calls purchased at or near the ask, trades typically seen as bullish. The remaining 12 trades were calls sold at the near the bid or puts purchases at or near the ask, trades typically seen as bearish. The four largest trades of the morning alone represent a combined more than $772,000 bearish bet just a day ahead of earnings….CLICK for complete article
This fascinating infographic from Visual Capitalist perfectly illustrates how early adopters in the construction sector are benefiting from emerging technologies ~ed.
The rate of digital disruption is escalating in almost every industry. However, despite being one of the fastest-growing industries globally—construction has been one of the last to get hit.
Today’s infographic from Raconteur ranks the adoption of emerging technologies that will have a major impact on the industry’s processes and bottom line. The technologies help solve four major challenge areas that the construction industry struggles with: productivity, safety and training, labor shortages, and collaboration.
Which technologies could improve the lives of industry workers, and which technologies may pose a threat to their…Click here for full article.
The asset class of beautiful machines, which had already been struggling mightily, got whacked by the events in Monterey, California, last month. “Whether it’s threat of recession, broad economic volatility or too many cars crammed into too few hours, there’s no denying this year’s Monterey Auction Week results were depressed when you compare the results to recent years,” vintage-auto insurer Hagerty explained after the auction. The blow has now filtered into the monthly price index for vintage automobiles, the Hagerty Market Index for September.
The index dropped 1.3% in September to a value of 148.24, down 5.0% for the 12-month period, and now in a bear market, down 20.5% from the all-time high in August 2015, a deeper drop than the peak-to-trough decline of 16% during the Financial Crisis. The index, after three years of declining, is now back where it had first been in September 2013….CLICK for complete article
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