Authored by Scott Galloway op-ed via The Wall Street Journal,
Four tech giants - Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google - have added $2 trillion to their combined market capitalization since the 2007-09 recession, a sum that approaches the GDP of India. The concentrated wealth and power of these companies has alarmed many observers, who see their growth as a threat not just to consumers and other businesses but to American society itself.
Authored by Daniel Nevins via FFWiley.com,
Pension plan administrators do it. Their actuaries and consultants do it. Professional endowment and foundation investors do it. Financial advisors do it. Private investors may or may not do it, but they probably should.
Do what?
Two weeks ago, Goldman's clients were so worried about an imminent crash, the investment bank's chief equity strategist, David Kostin enumerated no less than 7 reasons why, as Goldman itself admitted, "the question every client asks: Is an equity correction imminent?” As a reminder, the reasons - summarized - were the following:
With VIX at its 2nd lowest level weekly close in history, amid storms, quakes, dismal data, oh yeah and nuclear armageddon looming, it is perhaps no surprise that speculators sold more VIX futures last week... to a new record level of shorts...
The Fed wants us to believe that it remains hawkish, that it will begin the process of unwinding its $4.5 trillion balance sheet next month and that it will hike rates again this year.
The markets aren’t buying it, even for a second.
The top performing asset class after the Fed concluded its announcement on Wednesday was… TREASURIES: the asset class that should DROP hard if the Fed intends to raise rates.