Financial Markets and Economy
A Dramatic Shift in Sector Rotation this Month (Stock Charts)
There has been a clear changing of the guard in April and chartists can see this change with a PerfChart on two different timeframes. The first PerfChart shows performance for the nine sectors SPDRs and SPY for the first three months of the year.
Large-Caps Looking Ultra-Pricey (Validea)
One of the focuses of Validea’s Guru Investor Blog since its inception has been to summarize the opinions of leading market experts on the current market valuation and how that fits into a historical context. To that end, we regularly present a variety of data on both sides of the market valuation debate, which often can lead to different conclusions, but that we hope leads our readers to be more informed about how leading experts look at the market.
5 Reasons Bond Funds Beat Individual Bonds (Wall Street Journal)
I often hear people (including financial advisers) say that individual bonds are better than bond funds, and I couldn’t disagree more. Here are some reasons to use low-cost bond funds for your clients.
Canada Does the Global Economy a Favor (Wall Street Journal)
Canadians think of themselves as model global citizens, whether training troops in Iraq or settling refugees at home. That civic-minded spirit has now spread to economics, as Canada pursues a mix of monetary and fiscal policy that helps the world as much as itself.
Soros Says China's Debt-Fueled Growth Echoes U.S. in 2007-08 (Bloomberg)
Billionaire investor George Soros said China’s debt-fueled economy resembles the U.S. in 2007-08, before credit markets seized up and spurred a global recession.
Agriculture ETF Rally Looks to Change Laggard Trend (ETF)
Agriculture exchange traded products have been spotted lagging their precious metals counterparts through much of this year’s commodities resurgence, but at least one agriculture exchange traded fund is looking to change that trend.
Asia Stocks Drop as Japan Falls on Yen, Investors Weigh Earnings (Bloomberg)
Asian stocks retreated from an almost five-month high as a stronger yen weighed on Japanese shares and investors assessed earnings.
The more you pay, the less you get from funds (Investment News)
Investing in an actively managed fund with high fees is like betting on a smoker to win a marathon, according to a new study released by Morningstar.
Why Money Manager Due Diligence is so Difficult (A Wealth of Common Sense)
Early on in my career a portfolio manager told me a little secret about the money management business. He said, “Every professional asset allocator we talk to says they’re looking to evaluate our shop based on the four Ps — people, process, philosophy and performance. The four Ps are actually performance, performance, performance and performance.”
Anger at 18,000 (The Reformed Broker)
The anger about the new all-time high the S&P 500 is currently approaching is palpable. Take my word for it, I read everything and everyone.
The Thrill Is Gone From Owning Stocks (Bloomberg View)
Before the Great Recession, almost two-thirds of Americans owned stocks. That number has since fallen to a little more than half, as you can see from the chart below.
How Microsoft Is Reclaiming Its Former Glory (Wall Street Journal)
Microsoft Corp.’s lost decade increasingly seems like a distant memory.
Your Industry Guide to the Shrinking Stock Market (Fortune Financial)
There's a lot of chatter today about the major decline in publicly traded firms (h/t Ritholtz Wealth's Josh Brown). This is not a revelation; industry commentators have been discussing the phenomenon for several years now.
Mother of Flowmageddon (Morning Star)
In my "Flowmageddon" article that ran a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that outflows can be damaging to the parent company–not just an individual fund. This week, I'll delve into that ground.
Politics
Trumpism Makes Social Security and Medicare Less Safe (Bloomberg View)
Donald Trump says Paul Ryan is wrong about Social Security and Medicare. The Republican speaker of the House wants to “knock Medicare way down,” according to Trump, and do the same to Social Security. Trump says this approach would cost Republicans the election, and also be unfair to people who have paid into these programs.
Why Would Hillary Clinton Pick a Female Running Mate? (The Atlantic)
What’s more historic than the first major female presidential nominee? The first two-woman presidential ticket, of course.
If it happens. But according to Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, it’s a distinct possibility. “We’ll start with a broad list and then begin to narrow it. But there is no question that there will be women on that list,” he told The Boston Globe.
Technology
Skull Echoes Are The New Passwords (Popular Science)
Passwords fail. Human memory is weak, so we pick familiar terms. To avoid familiar terms, logins require long passwords, with numbers and capitalization and special characters. Humans forget these, because they’re complicated, and so they have to answer security questions, which are things familiar to the person, and therefore discoverable. The greatest failure in online security is often fallible memory.
Health and Life Sciences
Sleeping away from home? Half your brain is still awake (New Scientist)
There’s a soft mattress, a warm duvet, and a mint on your pillow. But despite the comfort of the hotel bed, you toss and turn on your first night away. Sound familiar? It could be because your left brain refuses to switch off properly when you’re in unfamiliar surroundings.
This so-called first night effect is well-known in sleep research.
Older adults who lift weights live longer (Futurity)
Older adults who strength trained at least twice a week had 46 percent lower odds of death for any reason than those who did not, according to a survey of 30,000 people.
Many studies have previously found that older adults who are physically active have better quality of life and a lower risk of mortality. Regular exercise is associated with prevention of early death, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and some cancers.
Life on the Home Planet
Half a degree extra warming would lead to catastrophic impacts (New Scientist)
At the Paris climate summit last December world leaders agreed to try to limit warming to below 2°C – and if possible below 1.5°C – in part because they perceived crossing that boundary to be too risky.
But no one knew for sure what difference that half degree rise would actually mean.
Conservation 'failing Congo rainforests' (BBC)
Establishing new nature reserves with strict protection measures actually fails local communities and wildlife in the Congo Basin, a report says.
It said despite vast sums being spent on rainforest conservation, biodiversity continued to decline and community rights were being eroded.
