A U.S. report showed home sales rose for a third month in December, adding to signs including falling claims for jobless benefits that the world's largest economy is gaining momentum.
Scott Schermerhorn, chief investment officer at Granite Investment Advisors, is so enamored with stock valuations in relation to the strength and direction of dividends that he believes portfolios should be tilted strongly in favor of stocks over bonds.
The classic strategic reasons to own municipal bonds still hold true: They generally have low correlations to other asset classes and offer a meaningful tax advantage to investors — features that are unlikely to change in the near term.
What a difference a year makes. Twelve months ago, banking analyst Meredith Whitney predicted that 2011 would bring “hundreds of billions of dollars” of municipal bond defaults due to intense fiscal stress on states and local governments.
Investors reaching for yield are finding it in an unlikely place: battered financial companies.
Stock rally to cut into bond yields, Wells Capital predicts; time to overweight equities
Americans are back in the borrowing mood, and even the wealthy are getting in on it when the credit is cheap enough, according to advisers.
Bearer bonds from alleged Philippines plane crash are little more than wallpaper
The head of the world's biggest bond fund said he sees a more than 1 in 3 chance that the euro zone will break apart and trigger a financial crisis.
Wells Fargo & Co. will pay up to settle criminal charges and civil claims for Wachovia Bank's conspiring to overcharge state and local governments on investments.
Total Return Fund boss reverses course, boosts holdings of government paper to 30%
Bill Gross is backing away from Pacific Investment Management Co.'s outlook for a “new normal” after lagging behind the majority of his peers during the biggest bond-market rally in nine years.
Buying bonds for safety, when so many stocks are yielding such attractive dividends, is a losing strategy: Ave Maria manager.
While they wait for interest rates to rise and a chance to reinvest for greater yield, advisers remain parked in short-duration, high-quality fixed-income instruments.
State and local governments not nearly out of the woods, analyst says
Ratings cuts of two or more notches are expected to pick up over the summer as agencies review their methodologies
Returns for top-rated tax-exempt paper on a par with Treasuries; lower-rated debt the better bet, say experts
Judge upholds Finra's earlier decision in muni bond fund dispute; ordered to pony up $54M
Europe is being blamed again today for the volatility in the U.S. equity markets, but some market watchers are saying the knee-jerk reactions by investors go too far.
