Biography
David Schawel, CFA, is a portfolio manager for New River Investments in the Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina area. Previously, he managed a $2-billion fixed-income portfolio for Square 1 Financial, which he joined in 2008.
Operation twist is scheduled to end, and the Fed seems intent on replacing it with a program of buying longer-term U.S. Treasuries. Now more than ever, there seems to be a dramatic divergence between the paths of monetary and fiscal policies.
Few bond fund managers attract as much attention as DoubleLine Capital’s Jeffrey Gundlach. I am always anxious to see portfolio changes made in this fund, and I recently had the opportunity to take a close look at the fund holdings, which can give some valuable insight into how fixed income investors might consider positioning their portfolios.
Having recently passed the four-year anniversary of the Lehman Brothers collapse, it’s tempting to believe that our economy and capital markets have learned from their mistakes. Nevertheless, every now and then Wall Street reminds us that it has “fallen off the wagon,” and reverted back to scary old ways of the bad old days. One of those old tricks is to add unnecessary leverage to assets that may not be safe to begin with.
Bill Gross’s recent monthly commentary for PIMCO paints a disturbing picture for investors; his vision ends with stocks being “singed” and bonds being “burnt to a crisp.”
The advent of a new round of quantitative easing has significant impact for investors, but it’s important to understand what’s actually happening.
Despite historically low interest rates and the risk of future rate increases, there are ways to make money in the fixed-income market.
As in golf, success in the financial markets is a difficult task.
One thing fashion and investment strategies have in common is that they are susceptible to fads, short-lived moments of intense collective enthusiasm.