19 Jun 2014

ALM Insights – June 2014

ALM Insights is focused on banks and other institutions that use their portfolio to manage risk on both sides of their balance sheet. It takes an in-depth look at securities investment strategies, balance sheet and asset/liability strategies, regulatory topics and general economic information. To view this issue, click the image below. In This Issue: Remember The Taper Tantrum? What’s My Duration? Bond Sector Performance

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8 Jun 2014

Labor Market Picks Up

On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the economy added 217,000 jobs to the payrolls in May, which actually brings the number of jobs to levels not seen since before the recession in 2007. The chart below shows just how long it took it took to get back all of the jobs that were lost – a staggering six and a half years. The chart demonstrates that the… Read More

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29 May 2014

GDP Turns Negative

The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released their second estimate of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) yesterday for the first quarter of this year. Initially, the BEA reported the economy grew by an annualized rate of 0.10 percent, which was a fairly bad print.  The cold winter shouldered a lot of the blame, but it also seemed like the economy would have slowed down anyway even if the winter had been… Read More

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19 May 2014

The State of Housing

A few weeks ago when Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen testified before Congress, she said that ‘readings on housing activity, a sector that has been recovering since 2011, have remained disappointing so far this year and will bear watching.’ Since the World War II, residential housing activity has been about 4.75 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).  During the bubble that hare increased to about 6.4 percent, cratered to two… Read More

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21 Apr 2014

The Truth About Global Growth

Legendary investor Peter Lynch once said that if you spend 13 minutes per year on economics, you’ve wasted 10 minutes. Although I spend more than three minutes per year looking at economic data, I do tend to look a lot less than others in the industry.  Many years ago, I saw a study that showed that the connection between gross domestic product (GDP) and stock market returns were lowly correlated,… Read More

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25 Mar 2014

ALM Insights – March 2014

ALM Insights is focused on banks and other institutions that use their portfolio to manage risk on both sides of their balance sheet. It takes an in-depth look at securities investment strategies, balance sheet and asset/liability strategies, regulatory topics and general economic information. To view this issue, click the image below. In This Issue: The Plan to Wind Down Fannie and Freddie Economic Analysis – Fed Digests Mixed Data Bond… Read More

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16 Jan 2014

Morningstar’s Manager of the Year

Markets were higher today on upbeat earnings and manufacturing data.  The S&P 500 closed at an all time high and is now up 0.07 percent for the year!  Who knew such a little return could be so exciting. Much of the excitement about earnings came from Bank of America (BAC), which posted its highest annual profit since the financial crisis.  Back in 2007, when BAC had a market capitalization of… Read More

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13 Jan 2014

December Jobs Data Disappoints

Markets were slightly higher on Friday despite the surprisingly weak employment situation that was well below expectations. Bonds rallied sharply on the report with the yield on the 10-year US Treasury bond dropping almost one tenth of one percent, from 2.97 percent to 2.88 percent on Friday.

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9 Jan 2014

Inflation Measurement or Manipulation?

  US stock markets were almost absolutely flat yesterday, as seen investors digested the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) December minutes. Recall that this was the meeting where the Fed decided to slow down their monthly bond-purchasing program to $75 billion per month, so the minutes were particularly interesting. There were no major surprises (hence the stock markets collective yawn), but it was good to see that there was widespread… Read More

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