Business

Over the weekend, Deutsche Bank's cheerful house bull, equity strategist David Bianco (not to be confused with DB's brand new bear, chief economist Joe Lavorgna), released a note explaining why one should ignore everything that does not fit a bullish narrative, and explained that he expects the S&P to hit 2,500 by 2018 (with one warning: "We think the S&P 500 can reach 2500 before suffering a 20%+ bear market decline. However, the next bear market could erase all further gains from this cycle. This is a significant risk when EPS growth is slow and yet the PE is above average.")

Was it ever in doubt?

Oh just one thing...

Earnings expectations have plunged over 6% since the last time The Dow was here.

Chart: Bloomberg

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan admitted in an interview with Sara Eisen that quantitative easing did what it was supposed to do, which was to inflate stock prices and drive multiple expansion.

He was confused as to why things such as corporate earnings, capital spending, and productivity have declined given how much QE was pumped into the system. The answer to the riddle of course, is that QE was never intended to help fix anything fundamentally, it was as Kyle Bass said recently, simply a mechanism to transfer wealth and make the rich richer.

Currently the US Dollar, traded on the stock market as (UUP), and (USDU); is the world's reserve currency. Although there is talk of the fall of the US Dollar as the world reserve currency, it's all talk and there's no signs that this will happen any time soon. Hungary recently issued sovereign bonds in Yuan - but so what? It's just a drop in the bucket. The practical fact is there is no real threat to the US Dollar's status as a reserve currency. However, there may be one.

By EconMatters

We reported last week that BP is facing a revolt from its shareholders over the salary of its CEO Bob Dudley. What happened was BP's Board approved an executive compensation package including a 20% raise in 2015 to nearly $20 million for its CEO Bob Dudley. Although we do not have the detail of other executive compensations, they must be pretty generous judging from Dudley's 20% raise.