Business

On Sunday, when we previewed the latest last-ditch effort to rescue Italy's third largest bank when Monte Paschi launched a 4-day attempt to sell €5 billion in equity to anchor and retail investors, we said that "in the otherwise quiet pre-Christmas week, all eyes will be on Monte Paschi, and specifically the intentions of the alleged anchor investor, Qatar (and perhaps a handful of Chinese banks), to determine if Italy's banking crisis is "fixed" if only for the near future, or if the new year is set to begin with another "risk flaring" episode out of the Italian banking sector as Monte Pa

Authored by Scott Kristoff via Avondale Asset Management,

We started this year with the economy deteriorating and finished it with the second interest rate increase in ten years.  There were a lot of ups and downs along the way, but ultimately 2016 was defined by three key story-lines:  1) Brexit 2) The Presidential Election 3) Fed Policy.

With a vote of 7 to 2, The Bank of Japan decide to change nothing about its monetary policy. While expected, some had suggested Kuroda might shift the 10Y target away from 0bps, but no - no change to asset purchases, no change to 10Y target level, and no change to policy rate. However, in what some say is a tilt towards future tightening, The BoJ upgraded its view of the Japanese economy.

Submitted by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

The post-election euphoria has been quite amazing as the markets have surged more than 8% since then. Of course, the election of Donald Trump was supposed to be a disaster, but that rhetoric quickly changed, at least for now.

The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) has just announced that they will be net sellers of $15 billion worth of equities over the next two years.  While the board didn't offer specific market commentary in support of the decision, according to Reuters, Chief Investment Officer Ted Eliopoulos cited market volatility, a 68% funded status and negative cash flow as the key reasons for the shift...we're sure that record high equity valuations on basically every metric ever measured had little to do with the decision.