Category: Commentary
23 posts categorized as "Commentary"
21Jul
Fed Outlook H2 2017
Our proprietary Astor Economic Index® is still showing good growth in the US economy. The index improved substantially this month to near its highest levels of the year. The bright spot of the economy continues to be broad labor market improvements for such a late period in the cycle. Direct measures of labor market slack…
16Jun
Why You Need to Care About This Amazon Deal
I was speaking to someone early this morning. Their exact words were “no big headlines on my phone this morning…that’s unusual”. Of course, they were referring more too political headlines, but the point was taken. Then the Amazon/Whole Foods deal hit the tape. By in large it was a surprise to see and exciting. Amazon…
2Jun
How To Tell If A Smart Beta Trade Is Crowded?
Featured in ETF.com May 23, 2017 With smart beta and factor strategies growing in popularity, getting in and out of them has become a real concern for today’s investors. Are they getting too crowded? How long is too long to be in a strategy? Can I bet against these factors and make money? Deepika Sharma,…
7Nov
Weekly Drive: October 27th to October 31st, 2014
NOTE: Content was written on 11/4 and posted 11/7. Certain events already took place. I hope everyone is ready for winter. It is coming. We had our first snowflakes of the season last Friday along with massive waves on the lakefront which ruined the walking path. THE KEY ECONOMIC LANDMARKS WE PASSED 1. Housing Pending Home…
27Oct
Weekly Drive: October 20th to October 24th, 2014
Halloween is here! There are a few more days to buy candy, carve a pumpkin, and figure out what costume to wear. Hope everyone has a safe and fun time on Friday. THE KEY ECONOMIC LANDMARKS WE PASSED 1. Housing Existing Home Sales: 5.17M vs 5.10M est. New Home Sales: 467K vs 470K est. News…
21Oct
Weekly Drive: October 14th to October 17th, 2014
THE KEY ECONOMIC LANDMARKS WE PASSED 1. Retail Sales: -0.3% vs. -0.1% est. A bit of a bummer report but also not completely unexpected considering sales were up 0.6% in August. Excluding autos, sales were still down -0.2% for the month. A look at Figure 1 shows weakness across many categories, including gasoline stations and…
17Oct
Worrying about the Wrong Things
Fever. Chills. Cold sweats. Nausea. Ebola? No, these are the classic signs of a market-induced malaise caused by rampant fear and worry over the wrong things. The market, which seemed to be itching for a downturn, scared itself into one over a rash of unconnected symptoms. From Ebola fever (the media-induced variety), to concerns over…
13Oct
Weekly Drive: September 29th to October 10th, 2014
I am a week behind so it is time to catch up. Economic reports were sparse last week so much of the discussion there will be focused on the week prior. Financial markets will be covered for both periods. THE KEY ECONOMIC LANDMARKS WE PASSED 1. Nonfarm Payrolls: 248K vs. 215K est. We got the…
25Aug
Weekly Drive: August 18th to August 22nd, 2014
THE KEY ECONOMIC LANDMARKS WE PASSED 1. Housing – there were a lot of data points related to housing so I’ll sum them up in quick bullet points. Housing Starts: 1093K vs. 965K est. NAHB Index: 55 vs. 53 est. Building Permits: 1052K vs 1000K est. Existing Home Sales: 5.15M vs 5.02M est. Looking at…
18Aug
Weekly Drive: August 11th to August 15th, 2014
THE KEY ECONOMIC LANDMARKS WE PASSED 1. Retail Sales: 0.0% vs. 0.2% est. On a negative note, retail sales came in flat for July. Consumers appeared to slow down purchases of big ticket items as motor vehicles, furniture, appliances, and department stores all saw declines. Falling gas prices over the last month and a half should give…
11Aug
Weekly Drive: August 4th to August 8th, 2014
THE KEY ECONOMIC LANDMARKS WE PASSED 1. ISM Non-manufacturing: 58.7 vs. 56.5 est. The latest report on the service industry smashed expectations and hit the highest level in nearly a decade (December 2005). With yet another print above 50, services have expanded for 54 straight months. The new orders subset also hit decade highs with a reading…
4Aug
Weekly Drive: July 28 to August 1, 2014
Welcome to the first edition of our new weekly commentary piece. My goal is to use this forum as a way to summarize economic and market activity from the prior week while providing insight from my seat on the Investment Committee and trade desk. THE KEY ECONOMIC LANDMARKS WE PASSED 1. Q2 GDP: 4.0% vs. 3.0% est, Q1…
8Jan
Why and How to Pick Tactical for your Portfolio
This note seeks to make two points about why and how to pick a tactical manager. Section 1 shows that Tactical can provide better returns and better risk-adjusted returns than a static allocation to asset class buckets. Section 2 shows that within tactical, picking a diversified portfolio of managers is vital to achieving Tactical’s promise….
13Dec
Cleaning Up After the Party is Over: How the Fed Will End Quantitative Easing
With tapering in the air along with holiday cheer, we are getting a lot of questions about how the Fed will end its Quantitative Easing program. This note quickly reviews the QE program and then discusses how the Fed’s asset purchase program will be unwound. Our expected scenario is that sometime in the next few…
22Nov
Looking Beyond the Taper
Sometime soon the Fed will reduce its current level of asset purchases. Let’s look quickly at why the Fed will be taking that action and then move beyond that day to think about how monetary policy might evolve over 2014. Since September 2012 the Fed has been buying $85 billion per month in treasury and…
18Oct
Doctor, what’s the Prognosis?!
At Astor, we have an analogy we like to use from time to time to put into perspective our view of economic/political/fiscal, etc. events and how the market and economy may react to them. When a healthy person contracts pneumonia, they get sick no question, but through normal processes of the immune system, they resume…
16Jul
Grow or Get off the Pot
Even though the U.S economic picture is viewed as modestly improving, we’ve experienced two straight quarters of GDP under 2% and Q2 looks to follow suit. Empirically, that just doesn’t happen in expansions, but it’s what we’ve lived for almost two years now. The minutes from the June FOMC meeting continued on the thesis of…
20Jun
Oops… I Bernanked Again
As the Fed continues to be “transparent”, markets are left roiled in the wake. First, we had the fiasco on May 22nd and now we have this week. Comments from Chairman Bernanke during yesterday’s testimony caused an afternoon selloff that strengthened into the close. Not surprisingly, the selling pressure continued through today’s open with a…
6Jun
Harvey Dent’s Market
The current stock market is fit for Harvey Dent of the popular Batman comics. On certain days, positive fundamental data is cheered and on others it is booed. Harvey Dent was nicknamed Two-Face and it is precisely that reason why I am labeling it Harvey Dent’s Market. Two-Face based outcomes off a coin flip using…
30May
The Problem with Buying is You Have to Sell at Some Point
Buy Low, Sell High is the mantra of the investment world. The Federal Reserve’s motto seems to be Buy More, Sell Never. First we had QE. When QE failed to stoke growth, the Fed extended the program into what is now known as QE2. When QE2 gave similar results, Big Ben initiated QE3 (or QE-to-Infinity)…