The Big Picture

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• Japan
• Discuss: Is Anything Cheap?
• 10 Monday PM Reads
• Google’s Mobile Business
• Dividend Yield vs 10 Year Bonds to 1877
• 10 Monday Reads
• Spotify vs. Pandora
• As Serious as Daylight Savings Time . . .
• Number Crunchers & the Big Data Revolution

Japan Posted: 12 Mar 2013 02:24 AM PDT Japan David R. Kotok March 11, 2013     Japan is on a tear. After two decades of financial repression and deflationary suffering, a new government has changed policy in a fierce way. Japan now seeks inflation. It will get it. It seeks higher asset prices. It will get them. It seeks economic growth. It may get it if there are reforms to allow it. The yen will head over 100 and to 115 to the dollar in the shorter term. Longer-term it may get much weaker still. The Japanese stock market is rallying, after endless malaise. Disclosure: we are in that market, using DXJ, the Wisdom Tree currency-hedged ETF, to participate. In the near term the Japanese central bank will be the catalyst to take the G4 central banks' total assets above $10 trillion. The G4 currencies are the yen, dollar, pound, and euro. The Fed and the UK will boost that $10 trillion even more, and the ECB will struggle with what to do but eventually succumb. We expect the G4 total to top $11 trillion by yearend. Zero interest rates are bullish for asset prices. There is more ahead. ~~~ David R. Kotok, Chairman and Chief Investment Officer, Cumberland Advisors

Discuss: Is Anything Cheap? Posted: 11 Mar 2013 04:00 PM PDT click for larger graphic     All of the major markets have had a huge run off of the lows (though they are barely flat since the 07 peaks). What does this mean? Are markets too expensive, or are they better priced than last time? What say ye?     Source: Is Anything Cheap? JASON ZWEIG, JOE LIGHT and LIAM PLEVEN WSJ, March 8, 2013 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324034804578346610043739152.html

10 Monday PM Reads Posted: 11 Mar 2013 01:30 PM PDT My afternoon train reading: • Howard Oaks, Guru to the Stars (Barron’s) • Most-Admired Companies Aren’t Always Great Investments (WSJ) see also Is Anything Cheap? (WSJ) • CIMA revokes HSBC Mexico licence (Cayman Net News) • In major policy shift, scores of FDIC settlements go unannounced (Los Angeles Times) • Bernanke Provokes Mystery Over Fed Stimulus Exit (Bloomberg) and yet Dollar rallies across the board, cheered by U.S. jobs data (Reuters) • Congress is the Biggest Threat to the Jobs Recovery (The Fiscal Times) • Uninsured Americans Get Hit With Biggest Hospital Bills (Bloomberg) • How the Iraq war hurt Republicans (Washington Post) • No Comment? (Law of Integrity) • Eric Clapton's New Album 'Old Sock' Streaming at (Speakeasy) What are you reading?     Firms Send Record Cash Back to Investors Source: WSJ

Google’s Mobile Business Posted: 11 Mar 2013 11:30 AM PDT Click for complete graphic     Click for ginormous graphic Learn more about WordStream’s report on Google’s mobile performance.

Dividend Yield vs 10 Year Bonds to 1877 Posted: 11 Mar 2013 08:30 AM PDT Equity Index Dividend Yield vs 10 yr Bond to 1877 click for larger graphic   With nearly every major developed country in the world and their central banks — FOMC, ECB, BOE BOJ, etc. — have driven their interest rates to zero, investors are hunting for yield. (Maybe someone can securitize risky mortgages or sumpthin’). Really interesting long term chart looking at the plight of investors hunting for yield. The chart above looks at the US, France, Germany and Spain and their respective Equity Index Dividend Yield vs 10 yr Bond to 1877. Note there are times when these countries go their own separate ways — what’s up with Spain? — but when global events hit like inflation in the late 1970s, they react similarly.       Source: Ralph M Dillon rdillon@globalfinancialdata.com www.globalfinancialdata.com

10 Monday Reads Posted: 11 Mar 2013 06:45 AM PDT My morning reads: • Sell and Not-Hold (Businessweek) • Author of the spectacularly wrong 'Dow 36,000′ has new thoughts on the stock market (The Washington Post) • Shiller: Yes, We're Confident, but Who Knows Why (NYT) • Our Chat With Jim O’Neill ‘BRIC’ Builder (WSJ) • The jobs report, in seven charts (Wonkblog) see also The Rise of Part-Time Work (Economix) • What’s Fueling the Housing Boom in Vegas? (CNBC) • Cubans evade censorship by exchanging computer memory sticks, blogger says (McClatchy) • 12 Cognitive Biases That Endanger Investors (Minyanville) • The 19 Best Investment Blogs You Can Learn From (The College Investor) • The future of Reddit (The Daily Dot) What are you reading?   Employment Report: A terrible chart that gets a little better each month Source: Calculated Risk

Spotify vs. Pandora Posted: 11 Mar 2013 05:00 AM PDT click for ginormous graphic Source Mashable via  Daily Inforgraphic

As Serious as Daylight Savings Time . . . Posted: 11 Mar 2013 04:17 AM PDT I never use an alarm clock (never have). I don’t seem to need much sleep, and I let my body wake me up whenever it wants to. Daylight savings means I start getting out of bed at about 5 instead of 4. And who doesn’t like more sunlight at the end of the day? But not all is well: It turns out that Heart Attacks rise following daylight saving time. And, by the statistically significant amount — about 10%. (The opposite is true when falling back in October — they fall by 10 percent). Staying up late to finish off a disc of Californication when I wasn’t sleepy never helps either. According to Science Daily, “Sleep deprivation, the body’s circadian clock and immune responses all can come into play when considering reasons that changing the time by an hour can be detrimental to someone’s health.” This is really a long winded way of saying I am running late. Be back shortly . . .

Number Crunchers & the Big Data Revolution Posted: 11 Mar 2013 04:00 AM PDT The ‘Big Data’ Revolution: How Number Crunchers Can Predict Our Lives Reviews: “Every decade, there are a handful of books that change the way you look at everything. This is one of those books. Society has begun to reckon the change that big data will bring. This book is an incredibly important start.” —Lawrence Lessig, Roy L. Furman Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, and author of Remix and Free Culture “This brilliant book cuts through the mystery and the hype surrounding big data. A must-read for anyone in business, information technology, public policy, intelligence, and medicine. And anyone else who is just plain curious about the future.” —John Seely Brown, former Chief Scientist, Xerox Corp., and head of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center “Big Data breaks new ground in identifying how today's avalanche of information fundamentally shifts our basic understanding of the world. Argued boldly and written beautifully, the book clearly shows how companies can unlock value, how policymakers need to be on guard, and how everyone's cognitive models need to change.” —Joi Ito, Director of the MIT Media Lab “An optimistic and practical look at the Big Data revolution — just the thing to get your head around the big changes already underway and the bigger changes to come.” —Cory Doctorow, boingboing.com “Just as water is wet in a way that individual water molecules aren't, big data can reveal information in a way that individual bits of data can't. The authors show us the surprising ways that enormous, complex, and messy collections of data can be used to predict everything from shopping patterns to flu outbreaks.” —Clay Shirky, author of Cognitive Surplus and Here Comes Everybody   Source: The ‘Big Data’ Revolution: How Number Crunchers Can Predict Our Lives NPR Staff March 07, 2013 http://www.npr.org/2013/03/07/173176488/the-big-data-revolution-how-number-crunchers-can-predict-our-lives

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