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“Dear Optimist, Pessimist, and Realist. While you guys were busy arguing over the glass of water, I drank it. Sincerely, the Opportunist.”- Unknown

I’m forever blowing bubbles,Pretty bubbles in the air,They fly so high, nearly reach the sky,Then like my dreams, they fade and die.

The grotesque juxtaposition of the deadliest mass shooting in US history and another 150 point surge in the Dow, following on from the seeming indifference to the prospect of nuclear war in the Korean peninsula has prompted me to wonder if capitalism (or at least it’s current version) is in any way moral. It is often said that capital itself is amoral-it merely goes to where it is treated best, but participants can (or should) be. The excesses of executive pay of recent years and the Equifax stock sales by Executives prior to the disclosure of a major data leak, however, suggests otherwise. It is of course the case that without capitalism, we would all be living i…

It is becoming a bit of chore to keep up with the doom-laden predictions emanating from the twitter-sphere about the fate of markets, (though I am doing my best). The causes are variously, low volatility, passive investors, Central Bankers or market valuations or a combination thereof. The latest panic-du-jour concerns “market breadth”, which measures the number of shares advancing compared to those declining; the theory is that if too few shares are rising relative to those falling, the market is due for a tumble. On the face of it, it seems intuitive, but the problem with using market breadth to foretell market moves is that it is hugely unreliable; consider these two articles (from the same source), dated December 2015 and

‘Please, sir, I want some more.’- Oliver Twist (Charles Dickens) That we are living in a low return world is now so widely accepted as to be bordering on a cliche- but HOW low will long term returns likely be? With the caveat that no one really knows, it is possible to come up with a reasonable set of assumptions that can provide us with a range of potential outcomes. We looked at this issue around a year ago, so now might be a good idea to revisit the prospects from a slightly different angle, as there are many ways to arrive at a conclusion, some of which will be similar.

“The fact that there’s a highway to hell and only a stairway to heaven says a lot about anticipated traffic numbers.” – Bill Murray. (re-quoted from The Price of Everything blog).