Business

Submitted by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

I recently received an email from an individual that contained the following bit of portfolio advice from a major financial institution:

Zero... nada... zip! That's how many IPOs have started trading on US exchanges in 2016 so far...

As Bloomberg reports, at this rate, January is on track for the slowest month for IPOs since December 2008, when no companies filed after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Inc.

In fact, January 2016 was globally the worst month for capital formation (IPOs) since August 2008...

And not even the insiders are particularly hopeful...

Via Finanz und Wirtschaft's Christoph Gisiger,

James Bianco, president of Bianco Research, expects more turmoil to come and warns that there will be no easy way out of zero interest rate policy.

The world has yet to fully digest what is currently happening in Japan.

Japan is the global leader for Keynesian Central Banking insanity. The ECB and US Federal Reserve began implementing ZIRP and QE after 2008. The Bank of Japan has been employing both ZIRP and QE since 2001.

Put simply, by the time the Great Crisis of 2008 rolled around, the Bank of Japan had nearly a decade’s experience seeing what QE, ZIRP, and the like could accomplish.

Last week, WalMart doubled down on the wage hike debacle when the world’s largest retailer decided to give everyone a raise in February.

The all-in cost will be around $2.7 billion. While some were surprised at the move, it was easy to see coming. Indeed, we’ve long said that the company’s decision to hike wages for its lowest-paid employees would eventually necessitate similar raises for workers higher up the corporate ladder.