Succinct Summation of Week’s Events 3.31.17 (plus Random Walk Theory)

It's been quite a week again and the succinct summation is supplied below.  This week also our friend Burton Malkiel, Princeton professor and author of the classic "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" is back in the media this time as Barry Ritholtz's guest on the "Masters In Business" podcast with a 90 minute discussion on the state of everything.  This 90 minute recording is probably the equivalent of taking his class at Princeton so it's a good investment in time.  I read the book back in grad school and it is excellent.

Succinct Summation of Week’s Events 3.31.17

March 31, 2017 4:00pm by Barry Ritholtz

Succinct Summations for the week ending March 31st, 2017

Positives:

1. Corporate profits rose 22.3% y/o/y in the fourth quarter
2. S&P 500 and Dow Jones finished higher for the sixth straight quarter.
3. Q4 GDP revisions came in at a 2.1% annualized right, above the 2% expected.
4. Pending home sales rose 5.5% in March, well above the 2.4% expected rise.
5. Case-Shiller home prices rose 0.9% for the third straight month, the strongest run in four years.
6. After a 1% down week, stocks bounced back, with the S&P 500 gaining 1% this week.
7. Consumer confidence rose from 114.8 to 125.6, the highest since September 2000
8. For the first time in five years, the PCE index rose above the Fed’s 2% target.
9. Chicago PMI came in at 57.7, up from 57.4 previously.

Negatives:

1. Consumer spending rose just 0.1% in February, after just a 0.2% increase in January.
2. Jobless claims fell just 3k to 258k, down from the highest levels of the year. The 4-week average rose from 246.5k to 254.25k.
3. Retail inventories rose 0.4% in February, and are up 3.9% y/o/or.
4. Refinancing applications fell 3%, despite the drop in interest rates.
5. Imports fell 2.1%, exports fell 0.1%.

MiB: Burton Malkiel and the Random Walk - The Big Picture

MiB: Burton Malkiel and the Random Walk

April 1, 2017 9:45am by Barry Ritholtz

This week on a special rebroadcast edition of our Masters in Business podcast, we speak with Burton Malkiel, chairman’s professor of economics at Princeton University, and is a two-time chairman of the economics department. Professor Malkiel served as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers (1975–1977), president of the American Finance Association (1978), and Dean of the Yale School of Management (1981–1988). He was a director for the Vanguard Group for 28 years.

Currently, he is Chief Investment Officer to software-based financial advisor, Wealthfront. He is best known for A Random Walk Down Wall Street, now in its 11th edition, with over 1.5 million copies sold.

Our conversation range far and wide, and Malkiel discussed everything from how he urged the creation of index funds to why “a blindfolded monkey throwing darts at a newspaper’s financial pages could select a portfolio that would do just as well as one carefully selected by the experts.”

You can stream the full podcast below, or download it oniTunes, Soundcloud or Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts are at iTunes, Soundcloud and Bloomberg.

All of the books referenced are after the jump.

Next week, the return of Ken Fisher of Fisher Investments.