Business

Donald Trump “has a good brain and he’s said a lot of things,” which is why he often “speaks with himself” when he needs advice.

Be that as it may, Trump has apparently chosen to give his “good brain” a well deserved break when it comes to investing the portion of his net worth that isn’t tied up real estate because according to FEC filings, he has some $121 million stashed away in nearly two dozen funds run by a variety of asset managers including John Paulson and BlackRock.

The problem: they’re performing horribly.

After posting the smallest possible rebound in the past week, moments ago Baker Hughes reported that in the holiday shortened week (in which there was some extrapolation) the decline in US oil rigs has resumed, and as of this moment there were only 372 oil rigs operating in the US, down 15 weekly and the biggest drop in the past moth, to the lowest number in recent history.

Authored by James Montier & Philip Pilkington via GMO,

Executive Summary

Some time in the second week of February, when the market was tumbling on, among other things, fears of a U.S. recession, the Atlanta Fed was scrambling to give the all clear signal on the US economy when it surprised watchers by releasing a far stronger than consensus Q1 GDP nowcast of 2.7%.

Every year around this time, Americans face the certainty of tax time, and that means - in general - finding the cash to pay Uncle Sam his just deserts. This scramble for cash is seasonally evident in the variable-rate tax-exempt (Muni) bond market, where the typically wealthy stash their cash, as rates rise into tax time and fall after (as flows come and go). This year however, the scale of the outflows is enormous, spiking money-market fund rates from 1bp to 29bps...