Sunday, August 07, 2016

This week's Bloomberg Businessweek

This magazine has a "special double issue" at the moment, one called "The Interview Issue".  It is an interesting and diverting edition of the magazine.

The relatively brief interviews are with forty different people, most well known in business, some in politics, and a few in creative pursuits.  While there is nothing earthshaking here, the interviews seem to give a fair representation of the main strengths and interests of the person being interviewed and, depending on one's previous knowledge, can be enlightening.

The best article in the issue, viewed from this perspective of course, is titled "Is Banking Better in Bed" and concerns the move to negative interest rates in certain regions and the almost lack of interest return broadly, unless one is inclined to try out bonds from Greece, Russia, Pakistan, or Venezuela among other distressed issues.  The safest way to seek yield is from dividend stocks, but many view that as a very crowded trade at the moment.  The U.S. high yield bond market does offer opportunities but buying them in a mutual fund is a bet that is highly dependent on the often opaque skill of the fund manager, more so than in most stock funds by far.

Preservation of capital is more important now than growth for most investors, at least that is a crucial starting point.  It does not make for an especially scintillating or entertaining investing experience at the moment.  Is boring the right word?



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