Business

The golden grail of investing is to find that investable asset that provides the greatest reward with the least risk. Alas, despite how commonsensical that precept seems to be, many "professional" investors and analysts seem to miss the point. You often hear, those who only see rewards (or lack thereof, ie. "Hey, Ether went up 150% last year!") or those who only see risks (or lack thereof, ie. "Bitcoin is too volatile to make a good investment").

After two years of recurring warnings (both on this website and elsewhere) that Canada's largest alternative (i.e., non-bank) mortgage lender is fundamentally insolvent, kept alive only courtesy of the Canadian housing bubble which until last week had managed to lift all boats, Home Capital Group suffered a spectacular spectacular implosion last week when its stock price crashed by the most on record after HCG revealed that it had taken out an emergency $2 billion line of credit from an unnamed counterparty with an effective rate as high as 22.5%, indicative of a business model on the verge

If US GDP growth were tracking sentiment data alone, Goldman estimates the US economy would be growing at its fastest rate of the post-crisis period... But as many saw yesterday - crushing the hopes and dreams of a multitude of over-confident asset-gatherers and commission-takers.

Authored by Kevin Muir via The Macro Tourist blog,

There are two things that most men think they are experts at. Ask any man, and chances are, deep down, they believe they are the world’s greatest bbq’er and lover (probably in that order). Personally, I know not everyone can be the world’s greatest lover, so I hope I might be in the top quartile (I am giving myself a boost for all those too-good-looking guys who think they don’t even have to try), but god damn it! I know that I am in the top percentile when it comes to barbecuing!

Authored by Jeffrey Snider via Alhambra Investment Partners,

Back on March 10, the New York Fed’s attempt at real-time GDP forecasting predicted that the Q1 2017 estimate would be 3.2%. That would have qualified as another decent quarter, the second out of the past three and somewhat in keeping with “reflation.” As we know today, the advance figure calculated by the Commerce Department amounted to just 0.69% growth in Q1.