Business

In March 2017, The Institution on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) released its latest report examining the corporate tax filings for Fortune 500 companies. It looked at 258 of the companies which had been "consistently profitable" from 2008 to 2015. The report concluded that these companies were collectively paying far less than the statutory 35% federal corporate tax rate – in fact the average effective tax rate was 21.2%. According to the ITEP report.

Bloomberg has apparently just taken it upon itself to pronounce the early, unceremonious demise of the traditional Long/Short Hedge Fund model after seemingly declaring that stocks will continue to march higher in perpetuity, with minimal volatility, thus rendering traditional financial analysis and stock picking about as obsolete as a Motorola pager from 1982.  Of course, we embellish a little...but not much...here is Bloomberg's take:

The long and short on hedge funds is that long and short isn’t working so well anymore.

 

As we showed yesterday, the price of bitcoin has finally surpassed "Tulips" in the global bubble race.

Overnight the former Bridgewater analysts Howard Wang and Robert Wu, who make up Convoy Investments, released their thoughts on what happens next... and most importantly, what causes asset bubbles...

When we see a dramatic rise in asset prices, there is often an internal struggle between the two types of investors within us.

"Contained"...

Post-FOMC, Gold was the biggest gainer...

US Equities were holding to gains but tumbled in the last few minutes with the S&P turning red...

While the fear-tracking VIX has been languishing near record lows this year, a gauge of so-called ambiguity, meant to chronicle the degree of uncertainty investors have in the probabilities they use to make decisions, has been at all-time highs in recent months, indicating that there’s more fear built into the stock market than common measures of volatility suggest.