Donald Trump’s election is having profound ripple effects across the global economy. Japan is among the early beneficiaries of the president’s policies. The Land of the Rising Sun recently enjoyed a healthy uptick in GDP, which makes its government debt far less frightening. Political stability also looks likely going forward. A weakening yen helps Japan’s exporters, too. Add it all up and now is the perfect time to diversify into the Japanese market. After all, it’s still selling at half its level of 27 years ago. I asked my senior analyst, Martin Hutchinson, to reveal his top five bullish forces on Japan. Hutch’s full analysis is ...
The Producer Price Index year-over-year inflation jumped from 1.6 % to 2.2 %. This inflation cycle began in the 2H2016. Analyst Opinion of Producer Prices After last month’s pause in inflation, it has returned with a vengance this month. From the BLS: On an unadjusted basis, the final demand index climbed 2.2 percent for the 12 months ended February 2017, the largest advance since a 2.4-percent increase in the 12 months ended March 2012….. In February, over 80 percent of the advance in the final demand index is attributable to a 0.4-percent increase in prices for final demand services. The PPI represents inflation pressure (or lac...
Allergan (AGN) has struck a $90 million upfront deal to partner with CRISPR/Cas9 leader Editas Medicine, Inc. (EDIT) on up to five programs aimed at curing eye diseases. EndPts.com Editas recently won…a nasty scrap over patent rights to its CRISPR/Cas9 technology (a faster, easier way to do gene editing) squaring off against CRISPR Therapeutics (CRSP) and Intellia Therapeutics (NTLA). It’s still early days in the CRISPR world, but gene editing has opened a door to creating a whole new generation of therapies that can fix some terrible ailments – and the potential payoff is huge. Using CRISPR/Cas9, researchers have been able t...
Photo Credit: SITS Girls/Flickr.com As per a report by Slice Intelligence, the growth rates for food subscription services is slowing down. Back in 2015, food subscription services like Blue Apron and HelloFresh were seeing growth of nearly 200% each quarter. Those growth rates have dropped to under 60% in the last quarter of 2016. HelloFresh’s Financials The idea for Berlin-based HelloFresh came to founders Dominik Richter and Thomas Griesel back in 2012. The two wanted to set up a food at home business to provide healthy food and cooking options to Londoners. Through adequate market research, the two narrowed down on the markets of Berl...
I have long feared that inflation will rip through our savings, sooner or later. Possibly there will be deflation first, but our various feckless governments will eventually try to repair their dodgy budgets by stealing value from our savings. In fact, it’s already happening, if you look at the derisory interest on bank accounts, which after tax and compared with iffy official figures on price inflation means your cash is rotting. But thanks to bloating the banks with bailouts, government bonds have little or no or negative yield, and stocks are a-bubbling on the basis of great earnings they will show when, er, and here’s another ...
With its credit impulse wearing off (and inflation spikes stalling any hopes of renewed stimulus anytime soon), it appears China’s always-happy consumer is not so happy as 2017 begins. Against expectations of a 10.6% year-over-year gain in year-to-date cumulative retail sales, February saw just a 9.5% rise – the weakest February since 2002. Presumably there is some lunar-new-year adjustment that will rescue this terrible print from its 15 year lows but we note once again that every one of the 37 analysts over-estimated (or forgot to read the calendar). This was a 4 standard deviation miss…...
This past week the bull market in stocks, celebrated its 8-year anniversary, off the March 2009 lows. The bull trends off the lows in 2009 are still solidly in play, as key indices remain inside of long-term rising channels. Make no mistake the series of higher lows and higher highs has NOT been broken. Speaking of broken, wanted to share a few tools we look at behind the scenes, that reflect a couple of small cracks (cracks of support), could be starting to taking place. The S&P 500 (upper left) and the Russell 2000 (lower middle) reflect that quality rising trends remain in place (higher lows and higher highs). Nothing of late has...
Pfizer Inc. (PFE) had been just the only player in a very specific breast cancer treatment game, but now Novartis (NVS) has entered the race with a brand new drug that could be a blockbuster and threaten Pfizer’s dominance....
Bloomberg oil analyst Javier Blas reported earlier today that Saudi Arabia has told OPEC that it lifted oil production in February, despite the ongoing OPEC production cut agreement with Russia. In essence, the Saudis have rolled back approximately one-third of the original production cut that they just agreed to in November. Why this matters: The Saudis are supposed to be the world’s swing producers of oil. It was the Saudis who started the rout in oil that took us below $30 a barrel earlier this decade when they ramped up production. The fact that they are incapable or unwilling to maintain OPEC’s agreed-to production cut does not bode ...