The February natural gas contract settled at $2.953 on the final trading day of the year, capping off another exciting year of trading. That comes in 79.1 cents below the last settle of 2016, or a fall of 21.1% on the year (though a large chunk of that selling came in the first few days of 2017). As shown below, we helped clients navigate a number of weather-driven phenomena in the natural gas market, as prices spent quite a bit of time between $2.8-$3.2, a range we end the year back within. We closed out the year with easily the most elevated cash prices of the past 6 months, as early January prices put quite a bid under Henry Hub cash tod...
McClellan Financial says an eight-year cycle for gold is about to start and the next five years will likely be good ones. Via email from Tom McClellan, please consider Gold’s 8-Year Cycle. We are now entering the upward phase of gold’s 8-year cycle, and that should bring some fun gains. And this comes at a time when gold has not been getting much of investors’ attention. If gold stays flat for a year, and Bitcoin twinkles to get all of the attention, speculators eventually drift away from gold. That sets up a great opportunity for gold to start getting more attention, and more money thrown its way. As with most market cycles, gold...
We all tend to understand the concept of productivity as it is used in a business setting. Business productivity is a measure of the efficiency of an organization. That is, in this context productivity represents the ability of a firm to manage its resources as well as possible to produce profitable goods or services. In other words, business productivity indicates how well a firm is really doing. At the economy level, there is also a productivity measure which provides a rough gauge of how well the economy is performing. Productivity (or output per employed worker) in the U.S. has been improving, albeit very slowly compared to the previous d...
On Friday afternoon, we brought you “Requiem For 2017: The Year In Charts,” a visual guide to what, by most accounts (double entendre alert), was a stellar 2017 for investors. At this point, you’re probably exhausted with year-ahead outlooks, forecasts, “top themes”, and the like. Indeed, if you can’t regurgitate the ubiquitous “Goldilocks” narrative off the top of your head, then you’re not in the loop. Similarly, you should be so well-versed in the prevailing market dynamics that you can list at least four reasons why vol. was suppressed in 2017 even after eight shots of cheap vodka. Finally, you should be so indoctrinated...
Incepted in 1988, Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM) offers financial services including investment and advisory solutions, and risk-management expertise to institutional and individual investors throughout the globe. With more than $1 trillion assets under management, GSAM is considered one of the world’s leading financial management companies. GSAM prides itself in having more than 2,000 professionals in 30 offices worldwide. The fund family develops investment strategies with respect to geographical regions, industries and asset classes. Below we share with you three top-ranked Goldman Sachs mutual funds. Each has earned a Zacks Mutua...
As we look toward the beginning of another year, talk of acronyms such as FANG (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix Google/Alphabet) and FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google/ Alphabet) continues. Analysts generally expect the FAANG stock performance to remain strong in early 2018, but not all of the stocks tend to be equal at this time of the year. FAANG stock performance calculations indicate that Netflix, Inc. (Nasdaq:NFLX) and Facebook Inc (Nasdaq:FB) stock are usually the safest bets out of all the companies. However, you may be surprised to hear that insiders at some of the FAANG companies are cashing in on the strong gains posted this ...
A selloff in the final trading minutes of the year pushed stocks into the red for the shortened holiday week. Technology stocks lagged for the week, led by Apple after some analysts suggested demand for the iPhone X was lower than expected and there was backlash against throttling performance of older phones. The market’s muted reaction in the first full week of trading after the passage of the tax bill suggests most of the benefits were widely expected and are likely already baked into prices. Weekly Returns S&P 500: 2,674 (-0.3%) FTSE All-World ex-US: (+0.6%) US 10 Year Treasury Yield: 2.41% (-0.07%) Gold: $1,303 (+2.2%) EUR/USD: $1....
With the New Year approaching, maybe it’s time to consider a new approach to investing. Unlike most forms of portfolio construction, Portfolio Armor’s hedged portfolio method eschews diversification. It looks radical at first glance: instead of allocating your investor’s assets among dozens of individual securities, you put their money in up to 8 names, some of which may even belong to the same sector. In a nutshell, you buy and hedge a handful of securities that have high potential returns net of their hedging costs. Easier Said Than Done The first step here is to find alpha, which is difficult enough, without other conditi...