Is Volatility Dead? Hardly.

Posted on May 31, 2013 by Paresh Upadhyaya

Co-Written by Paresh Upadhyaya and Michael Temple

Certain pundits suggest we have entered a new volatility regime – that volatility has been tamed by the massive amount of liquidity injected into worldwide capital markets by very accommodative central banks. We take a different view. While volatility has been declining across many asset classes, it is creeping into several that may have escaped some investors’ attention. (more…)

Filed under: Equity Market Insights, Fixed Income Market Insights, Macroeconomics, Mike Temple, Paresh Upadhyaya, Political, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Are Recent Market Highs Merely Rhymes, or Something More?

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Joe Kringdon

My family and I went out to dinner this past summer on a Sunday night during my vacation – five adults at a ‘farm-to-table’ restaurant in Maine. As you might expect, we received a somewhat healthy bill. Three nights later, the same group of five went out to dinner at a nouveaux Italian restaurant. When I looked at the bill, something struck me as odd. Later, when I set the receipts from those two very different restaurants side by side, I had to rub my eyes – they were exactly the same! The same five people on two different nights at two different restaurants with two different menus managed to produce the same exact amount on the bills! What were the chances of that – and what did it mean?

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Filed under: Equity Market Insights, Fixed Income Market Insights, Joe Kringdon | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Why Did Gold Prices Fall So Sharply?

Posted on May 6, 2013 by Paresh Upadhyaya

April’s sharp decline in gold got people’s attention. Plunging from $1,561 to $1,347/oz on April 12 and 15, it was a staggering decline of 13.7% the biggest 2-day drop since 1983. Is anything significant going on behind the scenes? We believe this price action is not a new phenomenon for gold, but a continuation of a much bigger trend that has been in place since the third quarter of 2011. (more…)

Filed under: Contributors, Equity Market Insights, Fixed Income Market Insights, Macroeconomics, Paresh Upadhyaya | Leave a Comment »

The Sustainability of U.S. Interest Rates Rising

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Paresh Upadhyaya

Investors are growing concerned, with good reason, we think, that yields have bottomed for the 10-year Treasury and will surge as the economy gains strength. Prices, which move inversely to yields, would fall, and the question is whether rising rates in 2013 could trigger a bond bear market along the lines of the Great Bond Bear Market of 1994. We don’t think so. (more…)

Filed under: Contributors, Equity Market Insights, Fixed Income Market Insights, Macroeconomics, Paresh Upadhyaya | Leave a Comment »

Why U.S. Interest Rates Will Rise

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Paresh Upadhyaya

Central banks have taken numerous measures to inject liquidity into their domestic economies. This has helped boost risk appetite and investor sentiment.

  • The European Central Bank’s stabilization programs have successfully reduced financial market and sovereign tail risk for banks.
  • Global growth troughed in Q2 2012, but has been on an upward trend since.
  • Market concerns over the U.S. debt situation are easing as the U.S. economy proved surprisingly resilient to many uncertainties.

As a result, investors are concerned that bond yields, which move inversely to prices, have bottomed for the U.S. 10-year Treasury and will surge, raising fears of a bond bear market along the lines of the Great Bond Bear Market of 1994. (more…)

Filed under: Equity Market Insights, Fixed Income Market Insights, Macroeconomics, Mutual Fund Industry, Paresh Upadhyaya, Political, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Investing for Income? “Safe” Bets Can be Surprisingly Risky.

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Joe Kringdon

Recently I read that the latest Powerball winner would walk away with about $150 million after taxes! Wow!

The recent, seemingly terminal decline in interest rates has been difficult on many investors who have been planning their income needs for the future. Interestingly enough, a wise presenter at a meeting I attended in January* addressed this very point with a ‘wow’ factor of quite a different nature.

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Filed under: Equity Market Insights, Fixed Income Market Insights, Joe Kringdon | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

What’s Next for U.S. and European Markets?

Posted on April 4, 2013 by Mike Temple

I was asked recently to provide some color around the state of global fixed income markets as we close out the first quarter of 2013. Of course, one of the more watched situations in the global markets has been Cyprus’s banking crisis. I won’t go into too much depth on the subject here, as my colleague, Cosimo Marasciulo, has recently provided a comprehensive analysis.

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Filed under: Europe, Fixed Income Market Insights, Macroeconomics, Mike Temple, Political | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Cyprus’s Banking Crisis: Testing the EU’s Problem-Solving Skills

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Giordano Lombardo

I had the opportunity to talk with Cosimo Maracsciulo, Pioneer’s Head of European Government Bonds and Foreign Exchange, on the latest issues with Cyprus’s banking crisis. A summary of his thoughts follows.

Why did Cyprus’s financial crisis spur the European Union into action?
There are a couple of reasons worth mentioning. The first is that these smaller countries have developed, at times, a banking industry whose assets under management outgrow GDP by several times: the ratio is above 7-to-1 for Cyprus. The second reason for watching Cyprus’s liquidity crisis closely is that it may provide the first severe test of the European Union’s (EU) ability to deal with the EMU debt crisis after the European Central Bank (ECB) pledged to save the euro from collapse.

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Filed under: Europe, Fixed Income Market Insights, Giordano Lombardo, Macroeconomics | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Currency and Emerging Markets: What Can We Expect?

Posted on March 28, 2013 by Giordano Lombardo

Currency markets are making headlines again after taking a low profile amid the crises and the turmoil in financial markets of the last five years or so. I asked Greg Saichin, Head of High Yield and Emerging Markets Fixed Income Portfolio Management here at Pioneer, to provide his views about what is going on, and what he sees as the drivers of investment flows into emerging markets.

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Three Trends Will Shake American Businesses Out Of Paralysis

Posted on March 6, 2013 by Mike Temple

On-shoring, energy infrastructure reinvestment and plant replacement are three trends in the making that will shake American business out of paralysis. In the last “Bond Deer in the Headlights,” I outlined the “Monetary Abolitionists” assertion that out-of-control government spending, made acceptable by historically low interest rates, was responsible for corporate paralysis in investing and hiring.

That camp also believes that as a result we are likely heading for credit crash, and shouldn’t be worried about the possibility of a rising-interest-rate environment. In terms of government spending, my conclusion was that while it’s too early to turn off the fiscal spigot, a plan to deal with government entitlements needs to be mapped out now.  In this final installment, I look more closely at the assertion that corporate America has been paralyzed by political uncertainty. (more…)

Filed under: Equity Market Insights, Fixed Income Market Insights, Macroeconomics, Mike Temple | Leave a Comment »

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