First Trust Global Portfolios Limited
Web: www.ftglobalportfolios.com/
Phone: +44 (0)203 195 7121
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
17.01.2018 15:05 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Don’t Time a Correction (16 January 2018 The stock market is on a tear. The S&P 500 rose 19.4% in 2017 excluding dividends, and is already up over 4% in 2018. It’s not a bubble or a sugar high. Our capitalized profits model, says the broad U.S. stock market, is, and was, undervalued. We never believed the “sugar high” theory that QE was driving stocks. So, slowly unwinding QE and slowly raising...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
10.01.2018 15:44 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Bond Bull-Market Is Over (08 January 2018) Bonds have been in a “bull market” for the past thirty-seven years. Not every quarter, or every month, but bond yields have fallen consistently since Paul Volcker ended the inflation of the 1970s. And just like any long-term bull market or bubble justifications proliferate. The current 10-year Treasury yield is 2.46%, which equates to a 40.7...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
03.01.2018 13:06 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Revolution (02 January 2018) One word that could describe Donald Trump’s unexpected ascendancy to the presidency is – “revolt.” Revolt against the “establishment.” Revolt against the “status quo.” After all, status quo bureaucracies, tax rates, institutions, regulations, and narratives promised prosperity, yet the economy was mired in slow growth and many felt it was hard to get ahead. Reliably...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
19.12.2017 15:16 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: 2018: Dow 28,500, S&P 3100 (18 December 2017) Last December we wrote “we finally have more than just hope to believe that this year, 2017, is the year the Plow Horse Economy finally gets a spring in its step.” We expected real GDP growth to accelerate from 2.0% in 2016 to “about 2.6%” in 2017. Our optimism was, in large part, based on our belief that the incoming Trump Administration would wield a...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
12.12.2017 17:31 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: The Fallacy of Weak Productivity (11 December 2017) Models of the economy are pretty useful tools. And simple models are some of the most useful. They help people envision how the world works. They help organize thinking. For example, the model that says potential U.S. economic growth is determined by “population (labor force) growth” plus “productivity” is an elegant model that shows how adding...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
06.12.2017 09:29 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Don’t Fear Higher Interest Rates (4 December 2017) The Federal Reserve has a problem. At 4.1%, the jobless rate is already well below the 4.6% it thinks unemployment would/could/should average over the long run. We think the unemployment rate should get to 3.5% by the end of 2019 and wouldn’t be shocked if it got that low in 2018, either. Add in extra economic growth from tax cuts and the Fed...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
28.11.2017 10:20 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Consumer Fundamentals Are Strong (27 November) Now that Black Friday has come and gone and Cyber Monday is upon us, you’re going to hear a blizzard of numbers and reports about the US consumer. So far, these numbers show blowout on-line sales and a mild decline in foot traffic at brick-and-mortar stores. Both are better than expected given the ongoing transformation of the retail sector. But...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
28.11.2017 10:20 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: The Economy is Accelerating (20 November) We’ve called it a “Plow Horse” economy, which was our metaphor invented to counter forecasters who said slow growth meant a recession was on its way. A Plow Horse is always slow, but that slowness hides underlying strength – it was never going to slip and fall. Now, the economy is accelerating. Halfway through the fourth quarter, monthly data releases...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
20.11.2017 11:09 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Investing vs Trading (13 November 2017). Are you an investor or a trader? Investors think long-term, while traders focus on short-term price movements. Trading furs, cloth, commodities, or tulips, has gone back centuries, if not millennium, but was about adding value and moving goods to markets. In other words, through trading many ran businesses that looked a great deal like investing. The “ticker...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
07.11.2017 14:15 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Clearing a Path for Tax Reform (06 November 2017) Washington D.C. used to complain that Ronald Reagan employed a strategy of “starving the beast” – cutting taxes so that new spending was tough to legislate. Now, D.C. seems to employ the strategy of “gorging the beast” – spending so much that tax cuts are hard to pass. Persistent over-spending, and costly entitlements have created permanent deficits. ...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
03.11.2017 13:59 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: “Continuity” At Fed, Not Best For Long-Term (30 October 2017) The short-short list for new Fed Chair includes Janet Yellen, Fed Governor Jerome Powell and Stanford economist John Taylor, the author of the “Taylor Rule.” Right now, Jerome Powell – a former Wall Street executive at Dillon Reed – is the runaway favorite. Taylor and Yellen are a very distant second and third. The Trump Administration...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
25.10.2017 14:32 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Can We Afford a Tax Cut? (23 October 2017) Congress took a big step last week toward enacting some sort of tax cuts and tax reform. That big step was the US Senate passing a budget resolution creating the room for ten years of tax cuts totaling $1.5 trillion with a simple majority vote. This procedure means there is no need to break a filibuster by getting to 60 votes. So right about now is...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
18.10.2017 13:51 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: GPD Growth Looking Good (16 October 2017) Next week, government statisticians will release the first estimate for third quarter real GDP growth. In spite of hurricanes, and continued negativity by conventional wisdom, we expect 2.8% growth. If we’re right about the third quarter, real GDP will be up 2.2% from a year ago, which is exactly equal to the growth rate since the beginning of this recovery...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
10.10.2017 11:31 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: If the current economic expansion lasts another year and a half, it’ll be the longest on record, even surpassing the expansion of the 1990s that ended in early 2001. Notice how we didn’t say it’ll be the “best” expansion of all-time, just the longest; it’s not the best by a long shot. From the recession bottom to the expansion peak, real GDP expanded 39% in the 1980s and 43% in the 1990s. So far,...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
03.10.2017 16:51 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Stocks Won Next Monday (October 9th) will be exactly ten years from the stock market peak before the Financial Panic of 2008. Imagine that Doctor Doom, the perceived “best analyst in the business,” told you on that night, when markets peaked, that financial authorities would allow mark-to-market accounting rules to burn the banking system to the ground, with many well-known financial firms failing or...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
07.09.2017 08:50 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Hurricane Economics The hits keep coming. Hurricane Harvey left destruction in its wake, and now, Hurricane Irma has Florida in its sights. It’s been five years since Hurricane Sandy, nine years since Ike and twelve years since Katrina. As with all major weather events, personal tragedy, pain, suffering, and loss are left in their wake. We have prayed, and continue to pray, for those affected....
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
29.08.2017 16:11 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Don't Fret DC Debt Drama Think that title sounds familiar? It is. We’ve been here before. And, as before, the “debt ceiling” is a gold mine for some politicians, journalists and analysts. A possible government shutdown, or reaching a “hard” debt ceiling, are both fun for pessimists to talk about. It seems to happen every couple of years and, as we’ve always said in the past, any dire...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
15.08.2017 13:34 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Consumers are doing fine It’s hard to read the business pages or watch the business news without seeing a story about the death of the consumer. In particular, the business press continues to be obsessed by relative weakness among traditional brick and mortar stores. There’s no denying that the business model for delivering goods and services to consumers is changing fast. But that doesn’t...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
08.08.2017 14:17 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: For many years now a relatively large contingent of analysts, investors and journalists has been convinced the stock market was in a bubble because the “Shiller P-E” ratio was just too high. Back on 8/12/2013, in our Monday Morning Outlook, we made our case that the Shiller model was too pessimistic. Now that looks like a pretty good call. In the past four years, the bull market in stocks has...
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Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook
25.07.2017 14:53 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Since the start of the economic recovery in mid-2009, real GDP has grown at an average annual rate of 2.1%. The second quarter of this year doesn’t look much different. Our calculations suggest real GDP grew at a 2.5% annual rate in Q2, exactly the same as the consensus forecast. That’s an acceleration from the 1.4% pace in Q1 and we expect better growth ahead. But consistently better growth is going...
