Sadly she should just keep her lying mouth shut and stop encouraging people to say things to keep raising rates on the table when she know she isn't and then staging her talking points to make the market happy that she isn't raising rates. It's an absurd way to do business because its premised on lies and tacky showmanship.

Taking on debt to capture more beta is dangerous and oftentimes stupid. However, sadly Wall Street has been loading up on risk across the board along with banks, thinking that investors will not notice. As long as they make money now who cares if the investors go bankrupt later. After all, its not their money in the first place.

This mentality seems to have permeated the banks and brokerages and is despicable, not due to the gains they make now or the losses they make later. It is despicable, because of the mindsets that think it and the regulators that allow it to fester.

I'd be safe and only buy the oil majors here. The simple fact is oil is looking better because small players are having to cut back and are going bankrupt. The pain at the bottom of the barrel will still be felt even if oil rises 10 or 20 per barrel. Simply put, their debt servicing for many small players won't cover their capital investment and maybe may not generate enough to keep operating. As some have found out, not developing their finds leads to a drop or disappearance of their reportable reserves destroying their asset as well as making it impossible to borrow.

Most high beta stocks are sporting already high valuations and value and income stocks rightly or wrongly are being pulled upwards towards parity to such valuations. This I suppose is better than high betas being pulled down into parity, however, it creates a much broader market risk when a correction really happens.

Although the market looks fine until the end of the year, we will see what happens after. There still isn't a lot of growth drivers and what is a growth driver is not as good as the Federal Reserve may have you believe it is. A commodities rebound prevents further margin increases for downstream providers who have been dealing with weak sales. If they should rise significantly corporate earnings may face an even grimmer future.

Thanks for the article. Good and interesting graphs and information. I don't think anyone should have expected the trucking boom to last forever. Sadly, truck purchases are not just due to lower gas prices but people trying to use their motor vehicles for utility like moving as rents go through the roof. Thank goodness there isn't a boom in mobile homes... or maybe there is.

Weak oil, weak economy, and inflation in some countries. It's not looking good. Although people argue with a weak economy there can't be inflation, they haven't read economic history. There can be inflation in a weak economy and it's not good at all.

You are correct usually, however, it has now spilled onto housing inflation. That is why they nerfed the way they calculate it recently. This has a big effect on everyone, even homeowners who's property taxes rise unless their state has a cap on the annual rise like California.

Well Yellen isn't going to raise rates until she has to as usual. She is almost required to raise in Q4 although I'm sure she'd like to find an excuse not to. The only way rates move up is if them move without the Federal Reserve which would be bad. That said, I expect more of the same and housing inflation to eat any income growth.

Corporations are buying back to prop their stock prices not because they are bullish.

Agreed, however, #bonds are very rate sensitive, so if rates rise the bond losses will pile on into a bloodbath even if no one sells.