First Trust Global Portfolios Limited

Web: www.ftglobalportfolios.com/
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Provider News

  • Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook

    13.04.2018 12:06 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: A Generation of Interest Rate Illiterates An entire generation of investors has been misled about interest rates: where they come from, what they mean, how they’re determined. Lots of this confusion has to do with the role of central banks. Many think central banks, like the Fed, control all interest rates. This isn’t true. They can only control short-term rates. It’s true these can have an...

  • Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook

    04.04.2018 12:08 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Ignoring the Invisible Hand (02 April 2018) One of the most important questions we have about our country’s future is whether prosperity itself will make the American people lose sight of where that prosperity comes from; whether we’ll forget to cultivate the attitudes about freedom, property rights, and hard work that have made not only us great but also all the other places that have followed the...

  • Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook

    04.04.2018 12:07 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: When Volatility is Just Volatility (26 March 2018) Stock market volatility scares people. But, volatility itself isn’t necessarily bad. Only if there are fundamental economic problems, something that could cause a recession, would we think volatility itself is a warning sign. So, we watch the Four Pillars. These Pillars – monetary policy, tax policy, spending & regulatory policy, and trade...

  • Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook

    04.04.2018 12:04 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: The Powell Fed: A New Era (19 March 2018) In the history of the NCAA Basketball Tournament, a 16th seed has never, ever, beaten a one seed…until this year. But, on Friday, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) beat the University of Virginia – not just a number one seed, but the top ranked team in the USA. We don’t expect the unexpected, however, when the Federal Reserve finishes its...

  • Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook

    04.04.2018 12:02 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Stay Invested: Economy Looks Good The current recovery started in June 2009, 105 months ago, making it the third longest recovery in U.S. history. The longest – a 120-month recovery in the 1990s – saw real GDP expand an annual average of 3.6%. The current recovery has experienced just a 2.2% average annual growth rate – what we have referred to as “plow horse” economic growth. That’s changing. ...

  • Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook

    06.03.2018 15:21 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Harleys, Bourbon & Denim The US doesn’t face “secular stagnation” caused by outside or uncontrollable forces, like foreigners (and bad trade deals), technology that steals jobs, or Unions that are too weak. Growth is slow because government has grown too big. In 2000, non-defense government spending was just 14.7% of GDP. President Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” - followed by TARP, which...

  • Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook

    06.03.2018 15:20 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Deficits, the Fed, and Rates Forgive us our incredulity. The bond vigilantes were certain that as the Federal Reserve hiked short-term rates, long-term interest rates would barely budge, the yield curve would invert, and the economy would fall into recession. That theory has been blown to smithereens, so now we hear that it’s rising long-term rates that will cause a recession. According to the...

  • Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook

    21.02.2018 11:15 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: QE and Its Apologists (20 February 2018) On March 9, 2018, the bull market in U.S. stocks will celebrate its ninth anniversary. And, what we find most amazing is how few people truly understand it. To this day, in spite of massive increases in corporate earnings, many still think the market is one big “sugar high” – a bubble built on a sea of Quantitative Easing and government spending. While...

  • Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook

    14.02.2018 09:35 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Snatching Slow Growth from the Jaws of Fast Growth (February 12 2018) The U.S. economy continues to be lifted by an incredible wave of new technology. Fracking, 3-D printing, smartphones, apps, and the cloud have boosted productivity and profits. Yet taxes, regulation and spending all increased markedly in the past decade, raising the burden of government and dragging down the real GDP growth rate...

  • Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook

    14.02.2018 09:32 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: New Policies, New Path (05 February 2018) Back in the 1970s, supporters of the status quo said there was nothing to be done about stagflation (high inflation and slow growth). It was a “fact of life” that Americans had to accept after experiencing faster growth and lower inflation during the decades immediately following World War II. Then, along came the supply-side and monetarist economists with...

  • Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook

    30.01.2018 17:56 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Clear Skies Ahead You know the old saying about every cloud having a silver lining? Well, if you listen to some of the financial press, you’d think their motto was that clear skies are just clouds in disguise. Friday’s GDP report showed the economy grew 2.5% in 2017, an acceleration from the average rate of 2.2% from the start of the recovery in mid-2009 through the end of 2016. Notably, what we...

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • 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...