In Lloyd Blankfein's last quarter as Goldman CEO, the company reported an impressive quarter, with Q2 revenues the highest in 9 years despite some weakness in equity trading due to subdued volatility.
While American companies have made much more noise about the destabilizing impact of President Trump's trade war, currency-related factors have been cited much more frequently as having had a negative impact on company performance...
"It’s been a fairly sluggish and unexciting start to the week for markets. Whether things get more interesting or not probably depends on what Fed Chair Jerome Powell has to say."
" The reality is the majority of individuals are ill-prepared for an impact event to occur. This is particularly the case in late-stage bull market cycles where complacency runs high."
Tech was the biggest contributor to the S&P 500's first half gain, contributing 2.6% or 98% of the S&P 500's 2.6% total return; excluding FAANG, S&P 500 index returns would have been -0.7%.
This week's calendar features a steady stream of potentially interesting events culminating with Fed Chair Powell's semi annual Monetary Policy Report, as well as economic updates from the US, Europe and China, and several key political events.
U.S. futures are fractionally higher, following European shares in the green as Asian equities retreated ahead of today's historic Trump-Putin summit and the first big week of earnings for US corporations.
"Our conviction has only grown stronger that easy is over. Monetary conditions continue to tighten across the globe, led by those in the US. What’s more, financial conditions are tightening as well..."
"I'm not sure if we made all that much more through the rest of the bond bet than we had made in the first, figuratively, 10 minutes of the bond bet. It was extraordinarily fulfilling, because it was a very difficult bet." - Michael Steinhardt
"The further the overshoot extends, the longer the economy will have to operate somewhat below potential to return to a sustainable place. This implies an increasingly narrow runway for a soft landing."
The credit cycle is not turning yet, but some long term investors are already planning for it. What are the potential contagion channels and how should investors position portfolios defensively when signals are flashing red?
America’s biggest bank with $2.6 trillion in assets reported results that beat across the board, and sees "good global economic growth" but cautions that "global competition is getting stronger."
"The record bilateral surplus shows exactly that the U.S. economy is robust while that of China is weakening. China’s domestic investment is softening due to funding strains, while consumption is not particularly strong either."
