Thematic products have become a critical part of the investing landscape by providing investors focused exposure to a sector or a group of companies in order to capitalize on a specific and timely trend. This month’s Thematic Times focuses on the biotechnology sector, where innovation and acquisition potential provide ample room for price movement. However, uncertainty within the sector makes indexed strategies a simpler and more suitable solution than stock picking for many investors.

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Thoughts From The Divide: Particularly Fluid

BY JON WEBB
Now a week out from the Fed making it clear that the squeeze of lower growth isn’t worth the juice of bringing inflation back to (not toward, Jerry!) 2%, Mohamed El-Erian summed up the state of play nicely in a recent article for the FT. The Queens’ College president noted that, “It is not often that you see a reputable central bank revise up its inflation and growth projections and yet strengthen a dovish tilt to its policy stance. Yet that is what happened in Washington last week when the Federal Reserve raised those projections up a notch and yet delivered two consequential signals – a willingness to tolerate higher inflation for longer and an openness to slow the ongoing reduction in its balance sheet.” Read more →

Thoughts From The Divide: Lack of Action

BY JON WEBB
It’s another week of heavy-hitting inflation data, with PPI coming in hotter than expected, CPI was in line with expectations on a year-on-year basis, and import prices “rose by the most in two years in April amid rising costs for energy products and other goods”. Under the hood, both CPI and import prices showed additional signs of running hot, with the latter featuring an upwardly revised 0.6% month-on-month change in March, and the CPI data, including hot readings in some of the niches and metrics followed by Powell et al., such as the  4.0% annualized reading in six-month Core CPI and a sobering 6.0% annualized reading in six-month Core Services. Read more →

Thoughts From The Divide: Danger to Itself

BY JON WEBB
In an op-ed for MSNBC, the “former Federal Reserve economist” warned against the Fed keeping “interest rates too high for too long”, which would cause it to “fail at its job” and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Sahm argues that the economy is “on course” for a soft landing, but “Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell is not flying the plane, despite the popular narrative” (which is a far kinder metaphor than Jay being a toddler in the back seat with a toy steering wheel). Sahm suggests that “giving the Fed credit means we could learn the wrong lesson”. Read more →
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