FACTS On average, hedge funds contribute more to stock market efficiency than most other institutional investors such as mutual funds, banks and insurance companies. Hedge Funds improve efficiency by exploiting mispricing Hedge funds exploit different of areas of the markets, which include price, dividends, or even regulation. The most common form of profit is arbitrage/ … Read more
Sector Notable performance: Occidental Petroleum has been the best-performing stock in the S&P 500 in 2022 with gains to more than 140%. Company Profile Occidental Petroleum is an independent exploration and production company with operations in the United States, Latin America, and the Middle East. At the end of 2021, the company reported net proved … Read more
MARKETS The Federal Reserve will no longer need to raise interest rates as aggressively as most government reports indicate little to no financial surprises. Indexes continue to recover supported by “on forecast” pricing, jobs and housing statistics The S&P 500 was up 9% last month while Nasdaq has climbed more than 20% from its lows … Read more
SECTOR TRENDS For the past 45 days, five of the largest U.S. banks have outperformed the S&P 500’s 13% gain. Goldman Sacs GS and Morgan Stanley MS, are up 19%, Wells Fargo WFC is up 18%, Citigroup and Bank of America about 17%. Vica overweight rating issued below Applies to Goldman Sacs and Citigroup
INDUSTRY REPORT SERIES Existing home sales in the US declined 5.9% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.81 million in July of 2022, the lowest since May of 2020 and below market expectations of 4.89 million. Sales declined for a sixth consecutive month, reflecting the impact of the mortgage rate peak of 6% in … Read more
GOVERNMENT REPORT SERIES The Producer Price Index for final demand fell 0.5 percent in July, seasonally adjusted, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. This decline followed advances of 1.0 percent in June and 0.8 percent in May. On an unadjusted basis, final demand prices moved up 9.8 percent for the 12 months ended … Read more
FACT President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act into law Tuesday, sending $52.7 billion to processor manufacturers over five years in an effort to help the US reclaim semiconductor industry leadership lost to Taiwanese and Korean companies and challenged by increasingly capable Chinese firms. Semiconductor makers are planning rapid expansions in the United … Read more
DATA Shares of Coinbase reached $116, +40% in inter-day trading following partnership with BlackRock announcement that will allow its institutional clients to buy bitcoin. Daily Trading Volume: achieved volume 53.7M, average 16.5M Most notably the ticker COIN topped GameStop’s popularity in online forums Thursday on Reddit’s WallStreetBets chat room, topping GameStop’s popularity in the online … Read more
MARKETS Wall Street lowered its consensus bottom-up EPS estimate by 2.5% from June 30 to July 28. During the past five years – or 20 quarters – the average decline in the bottom-up EPS estimate during the first month of a quarter has been 1.3%. As economic data continues to shows signs of slowing … Read more
FACTS Headline “So what Nancy Pelosi Arrives in Taiwan as China-U.S. Tensions Escalate”. Price Discovery, When Breaking News Comes Indexes React – markets react within 10 seconds and that the major price adjustment occurs within 1 minute of the scheduled news releases. Interest-rate and foreign-exchange markets react faster to public announcements than the equity markets. On … Read more