Category: Daily Instagraph

The US consumer is feeling the heat from the higher interest rates: delinquencies in consumer loans and bankruptcies are noticeably on the rise. The pain in mortgages is somewhat delayed as many mortgages are locked in at low rates. While the US consumer remains in pretty healthy shape, he will need to adapt to the … Continued

Berkshire Hathaway, the holding company of Warren Buffett, has accumulated a record war chest approaching 150 bn USD of cash & equivalents. This cash pile can be put to work when investment opportunities arise in case of a market disruption. Buffett has shown in the past that buying good assets at distressed prices when other … Continued

Today’s graph is for the investors who still believe you cannot lose money with US government bonds. Yes, you obviously can if you own long dated maturities and rates are rising. The I-shares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF is down 48% since its high in 2020 and the PIMCO 25+ Year Zero Coupon US Treasuries … Continued

With one quarter to go in 2023 for portfolio managers to generate performance, it needs to be stressed again how binary US equity markets have been for investors this year. Success or failure boiled down to one decision, namely being invested in the so-called magnificent 7 stocks ( Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDA and … Continued

Under the surface, the US equity market is doing less well than the headline performance numbers may suggest. The so-called magnificent seven, Nvidia, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft Apple, Alphabet and Tesla, explain indeed most of the performance of the S&P 500. A lot of the investor excitement is driven by the AI theme. The equal-weighted S&P … Continued

Exor, the holding company of the Agnelli family, currently trades at a holding discount above 45% to its Net Asset Value. This Net Asset Value is measured daily by Mister Market as around 80% of the portfolio are listed assets traded in the stock market. Main holdings are Ferrari, Stellantis (with the Fiat and Jeep … Continued

In case you are just back from a late and long Summer break without access to financial news ( lucky you ), here is the big picture of what happened over the last weeks. Interest rates are up, the USD continues to strengthen and stock markets have been weakening since July. Nasdaq is down more … Continued

Central banks in developed market have increased interest rates between 4% and 5.5% since the beginning of the tightening cycle ( ex Japan ). The Fed is now pausing and there are increasing signs that central bankers believe the job is close to done as the restrictive monetary policy shows effects. The increase in bankruptcies, … Continued

As we learned at business school, valuations and interest rates are joined at the hip. The higher interest rates are, the higher the discount rate is and the lower valuation multiples investors should pay for a future earnings. With the US risk free rate as measured by the 1 month US T-bill up from 0% … Continued

All eyes were yesterday on the Fed as it decided to leave rates unchanged and will now “proceed carefully”. Meanwhile on the Old Continent, inflation is set to be coming down. Germany’s Producer Price Index, or PPI — for August tumbled at the fastest rate since 1949! We agree this sharp downward trend was mainly … Continued