Forbes: Fowl Matters -- Will Britain Really Reject U.S. Trade Deal Over Chickens?

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Did the British government just fowl up the chance of a trade deal with the U.S. before negotiations have even begun? Not to be a Chicken Little, but sure seems that way.

And it all started off so well just a few weeks ago. Read more here.

U.S. News: Low Volatility Worries Some Investors

By SIMON CONSTABLE

The so-called "fear gauge" is looking low and that has some investors concerned. The matter at hand is complacency, or not worrying enough about the risks of investing.

The CBOE volatility index, or VIX, is known colloquially as the fear gauge. It measures the price that investors are willing to pay to buy insurance against a drop in the broad stock market.

"It gives you an idea of how much people will pay up for that protection," says Russell Rhoads, director of education for CBOE’s Options Institute in Chicago. "The more concerned they are, the more it goes up in value." Read more here. 

Forbes: What We Can All Learn From An Art Forger

By SIMON CONSTABLE

At the best of times, the market for fine art and antiquities is murky, but even at its worst, it's nothing compared to the seedy underworld of forgeries.

The latter is the world which Shaun Greenhalgh illuminates in his book, A Forger's Tale, which was published last month. It's the story he wrote in prison after the 2007 conviction for crimes that he details in the book. In addition to the inner workings of the art world, there is something for business people to learn. Read more here.

U.S. News: Forecasting Recessions Can Boost Your Returns

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Does it make sense to change your investments if you see a recession coming? Possibly so, but you'll need some economics know-how.

The bottom line is fairly simple. If you can get your prediction of the beginning or end of an economic cycle correct, then it could boost your portfolio returns substantially, according to some recently published research. Read more here.

Forbes: Undead Again -- How ObamaCare Became The Law That Wouldn't Die

By SIMON CONSTABLE

A decade ago the world economy was threatened in what became known as "Attack of the Killer Zombie Banks."

Now there's a new horror movie playing only in the U.S.:

"Undead Again: The Law That Wouldn't Die."

It's the terrifying tale of how the Congressional Republicans repeatedly try to kill ObamaCare, but by some occult science, the beast just keeps living. It has some comic aspects too. Read more here.

Forbes: The Only Three Market Sectors To Watch This Year

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Investors should do themselves a favor this year and focus on just three sectors. Why? Because that's where the earnings action is most likely to be, according to KKR which published its Insights report earlier this month. The paper had some other important findings as well. Read more here.

Barron's: Hot Weather Could Light a Fire Under Corn Prices

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Red hot dry heat in the western part of the upper Midwest is threatening the corn crop and could spark a big rally.

“The extreme drought in North and South Dakota (and currently spreading into Canada) may begin to hit the western corn belt,” says a report from Best Weather, a meteorological forecaster and advisor in Sarasota Fla. Adds Matthew Davey, a commodity analyst and meteorologist for the firm: “All the models are showing warm dry air sticking around.” Read more here.

Photo by Alejandro Martin on Unsplash

Middle East Eye: Egypt's economy on path to recovery

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Things are looking up for Egypt’s beleaguered economy. At least investors think so, which is why they are pouring money into the country. Analysts are optimistic also. The news must come as welcome relief for the country's residents who have suffered brutal inflation and soaring unemployment.

In what must be one of the bitterest ironies of this decade, the optimism of the Arab Spring in 2011 quickly turned sour as Egypt became mired in economic malaise. Read more here.

U.S. News: Sometimes, the Best Advice Is 'Do Nothing'

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Think back to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, when markets tanked overnight as Donald Trump's victory shocked investors. The next day in the gray and the rain, anxious traders at the New York Stock Exchange rushed to the exchange floor for what they expected to be a foreboding day. Read more here.

Forbes: China's Market Regulators Appear To Be At War With Themselves

By SIMON CONSTABLE

China's latest financial markets move is puzzling.

The country wants to open up its bond market to foreign investors. The reason for this would seem to be part of its apparent long-term goal of having the Chinese yuan become a major world currency just like the euro or the yen or the greenback. Some people even say the yuan could supplant the dollar as the number one reserve currency. Even if that happens it's a long way off in large part because of what the Chinese government is doing to itself.

The issue is that different parts of China's bureaucracy would appear to be working against each other, at least in their actions if not their intent. Read more here.

WSJ: What Are Interval Funds?

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Investors may soon be hearing more about interval funds.

With these funds, investors can redeem shares only at specified times or intervals.

Why would an investor want to own one? Because it’s hard for an individual to find another way to invest in the assets these funds hold. Read more here.

WSJ: Asia Might Beckon for Junk Investors

By Simon Constable

Could Asian junk debt be a sweet spot for investors?

Over the past few years, high-yield bonds from Asia have offered better returns than similar bonds offered in the U.S. and other regions, with comparable or lower volatility. There are reasons to think the trend may continue. Read more here.

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

No.3 Magazine: Deliberately Irreverent

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Some people manage to fit more into their list of achievements than seems reasonable. Take, for instance, British-born Anthony Haden-Guest: journalist, art critic, soldier, amateur boxer, war correspondent, escapee from a WWII internment camp, and cartoonist. He also wrote The Last Party: Studio 54, Disco, and the Culture of the Night, and numerous other books. 

That list only scrapes the surface. “Some people can be a Mozart or Keats and be together by twenty years old,” he says modestly. “Or you can be like me; just turned eighty and learning how to handle your weaknesses.” He’s obviously handling them quite well. 

Earlier this year, for his eightieth birthday party he held a boxing match in which, among others, he fought off an opponent dressed as President Donald Trump. Not long after that, he brought forth his latest collection of art “The Further Chronicles of Now,” which opened at Anderson Contemporary in fashionable lower Manhattan.

As with his boxing match, Haden-Guest is irreverent, but that's not the whole of it. He draws his cartoons mainly in ink, with limited color and seems to follow two rules of thumb simultaneously: bold is better, and less is more. Together they morph into a well defined aesthetic. That’s something with which he has wrestled over time. “I was a photographer for a while and and I realized that if I took a roll of 36 pictures, they would look like they’d been taken by four different photographers,” he says. “That’s a killer for a photographer.” Likewise, he looks back at his drawings and wishes everything from more than a decade ago was turned to ash.

For him, the process of ‘cartoonery,’ is deliberate. “Any artist will tell you there is always a mystery about how everything got there,” he explains. “That is not true about cartoons – it has to be a missile – even the colors should help towards to the joke.” 

Of course, one wonders what deliberate field Haden-Guest will take on now he’s entering his ninth decade.

See original story here.

U.S. News: Why Emerging Markets Are a Good Bet Now

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Emerging markets have been on something of a tear over the past year, and experts say they have more room to run. That's good news for investors who have arrived late to this party.

The MSCI Emerging Markets Index, which tracks stocks in 24 countries – including China, Russia, Poland, and Peru – is up more than 25 percent this year. That compares to gains over the same period of less than 20 percent for the Standard & Poor's 500 Index, excluding dividends.

What's behind this stellar performance? First, emerging markets are cheap compared to the U.S. stock market. Read more here.