I asked myself this question as I read the commentary about the recent sell-off in the pound sterling. Here is the pound against the dollar: Many commentators have taken the opportunity of the sell-off to castigate Brexit and Britain’s new prime minister, who seems bent on implementing ...
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In my post from last week about central banks I argued that they are devaluing their currencies in a zero-sum game for stimulating their domestic economies at the expense of their trade partners. A recent piece by Jonathan Laing in Barron’s echoes some of the same points. Laing cites ...
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One of the first things that you learn about economic growth, if you learn anything at all, is that growth is not a zero-sum game. That is, when a company like Apple increases its earnings by 40% or so, as it did last quarter, it didn’t simply “take” those earnings from its ...
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In Proctor & Gamble’s recent quarterly earnings report, the company announced a two percent growth in profits. Profit growth would have been much less tepid if it weren’t for the effects of foreign exchange. In 2013 P&G’s U.S. sales amounted to $30.3 billion, while ...
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About 40% of sales from companies in the S&P 500 Index come from their businesses in international markets, so an investor who buys American companies has greater exposure to foreign economies than he might realize. Our clients’ equity holdings are primarily U.S.-listed stocks, but we ...
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