Taxes: some quick bullets.

Markets like lower taxes. People like lower taxes. Businesses like lower taxes. Devils always lurk in the details: those devils are put there by Congress.

Congress will lose if it attempts to block a tax cut. Voters understand lower tax rates and want…

Markets in France, Europe, and globally are rallying as they breathe a sigh of relief following the first round of the French presidential election on Sunday. The pro-business centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron came in first, beating the far-right National Front candidate, Marine Le Pen. This…

The Trump administration unveiled their tax plan yesterday, with details to follow. It will take a while to work the plan through Congress but this is our quick take on how the plan affects municipal bonds and municipal finance.

Markets.

We were fully invested in our US ETF strategies before the weekend French elections. We are still there and overweight financials (banks) and tech. In our volatility strategies we are also fully invested and have been for over a week. These VOL strategies are mathematically…

Is there a threat to the municipal bond interest deduction?

As clients know, we have liked and continue to like exposure to banks. We favor the big banks and have a position in the PowerShares KBW Bank Portfolio Fund, KBWB, an ETF that captures the big banks. We also hold KRE and KIE.  We are overweight the sector. We will get to why in a minute.

I am scheduled to discuss policy-driven interest rates and other market forces on Bloomberg TV at 8 AM on Tuesday morning. In the meantime, here’s a rundown of the picture as we at Cumberland Advisors see it now.

The recovery of the global economy has continued thus far in 2017, and stock markets have generally registered healthy advances. In the US the SPDR S&P 500 ETF, SPY, gained 5.62 year-to-date April 11 on a total return basis; the iShares MSCI All Country ex-US ETF, ACWX , gained 8.12%; and in…

A history lesson may be helpful for those who are younger. Google “Hama.” It is a town (actually was a small city). The existing Syrian president’s father killed 20,000 of his own citizens there in 1982. What makes anyone think the present regime is any different? We must remember that the Assad…

I read the following excerpt in the morning edition of NightWatch for 4 April (This is a subscription service – for details see https://www.kforcegov.com/products/nightwatch/nightwatchdetails/).