INsider: ‘Death spiral’ awaits if muni tax break erased
Supercommittee notion of doing away with exemption not so super; going down the Whitney path. Read More…
Value stocks best bet to navigate choppy seas
Large-cap-value stocks stand out as the clear favorite in equities for the year ahead, according to financial advisers who took part in the 2011 InvestmentNews Industry Attitudes survey. Read More…
In Uncertain Times, Municipal Bonds Call for Caution
When the prominent banking analyst Meredith Whitney predicted late last year that “hundreds of billions of dollars” of municipal bond defaults would occur in 2011, it rattled the nearly $3 trillion market. Read More…
Everybody out of the mortgage pool? That’s a mistake, says ING fund manager
Dutra points out that Ginnie Mae’s offer an explicit guarantee; government-backed bonds provide ‘ballast’ for bolder bets. Read More…
Eavesdropping on a Fitch Solutions event in San Francisco
When Standard & Poor’s famously downgraded U.S. debt in August, Moody’s and Fitch, the two other big ratings agencies, steadfastly declined to go that far with the sacred cow of investments and kept their triple-A ratings in place. But what do Moody’s and Fitch think? I had that question in the back of my mind when Jeremy Fletcher proposed taking notes last Monday at the Fitch conference that came here to the Bay area. Fletcher (whose office is next door to ours in Mill Valley) manages portfolios — mostly bonds — for Asset Dedication LLC, whose clients consist of investors using RIAs and other financial advisory firms. Read more…