LyrArc Article Gist
Paulson in London with Alistair Darling Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, at a time when Markit Economics says the eurozone's Purchasing Manager's Index for the services sector contracted in June for the first time in 5 years.

LyrArc Article Gist
British Air's new all business class flights twice a day in 2009 between London city airport and either Newark or JFK.

LyrArc Article Gist
Pharma stocks are in a slump, Pfizer having lost 40% over 10 years, even with reinvested dividends down 25%. For this reason, these stocks offer high dividend yields to attract investors, Pfizer at 6.5% and Glaxo at 5%. Uncertainty about patent expiration, thinning drug pipelines and uncertainty about new President's health care legislation.

LyrArc Article Gist
Aggressive prosecution by Cuomo Atorney General of New York in the auction rate securities market scandal involving Citigroup Merrill Lynch and UBS who had to buy back the securities worth billions of dollars from the investors they had allegedly defrauded.

LyrArc Article Gist
Zweig of the WSJ points out that the Dow Jones average reached 22,000 but this happens as small investors move away from stocks to bonds. As a result the market is more stable than it used to be, with less speculative investment in stocks. He says investors are actually increasing investment in bond funds and moving away from stock funds as they reallocate to bonds using allocation strategies with fixed investment in stocks at a certain percentage. As the market moves up the portfolio becomes unbalanced requiring move from stocks to bonds. Since 2000 he says half a trillion dollars have moved from stocks to bonds and $17 billion in July 2017. Target date funds hold $998 billion and the $5.5 trillion in funds managed by financial advisers automatically reallocate to bonds as the market moves up. Experts say the question frequently asked now from investors is not which stock to buy but what is the right allocation between stocks, bonds and cash. This is a result of investors learning from the financial crisis of 2008-2009 and the decade that followed. The Dow at 22000 is three times what it was when it fell in the crisis. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Results in the Saarland election show the AfD party with only 6.2% of the vote. The CDU is well ahead of the Social Democrats. This result shows that the support for the AfD is strongest in the east. With the refugee crisis not as big an issue as it was in 2016, and the larger effort put forward in push back by CDU/CSU and SPD in the western part of Germany, the AfD sees its support declining from the levels it had in 2016.