Henry Ma's  Instablog

Top Stories Last Week

• Equity Markets Dropped

Stocks fell Friday after China reported its economy slowed than anticipated, capping their worst week of the year. Early in the week, the euro-zone crisis resurfaced amid worries that Spain will be unable to keep its public finances under control and will require bail-out at some point. Still, the markets weren't a straight line down. Hopes for additional central bank easing and enthusiasm for Alcoa Inc.'s earnings report helped a two-day rally before Friday.

• Consume Prices in US Increased at a Slower Pace

The cost of living in the U.S. rose at a slower pace in March as the run-up in energy prices eased, supporting the view of some Federal Reserve policy makers that inflation will ebb. Consumer prices increased 2.7 percent in the 12 months ended, the smallest 12-month gain in a year.

• Chinese Economic Growth Continued Cooling Down

China's first-quarter economic growth cooled to its slowest pace in 11 quarters amid weak export growth and sluggish construction activity. Gross domestic product grew 8.1% in the first quarter, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, below analysts' expectations of an 8.3% expansion. Analysts viewed this as a gradual slowdown rather hard-landing.

• Bank of Japan Kept Interest Rate Unchanged at 0.1%

Bank of Japan, which stood pat and kept interest rate at 0.1% on Tuesday, has remained under political pressure to offer further stimulus to a fragile economy with consumer inflation hovering around zero, well below the 1 percent target.

Top Stories to Watch This Week

• Earning Reports

Some large companies such as Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and Microsoft will report earnings this week.

• US Retail Sales, Housing Starts and Existing Home Sales

The retail sales released by the US Census Bureau is expected to increase by 0.4% in March. Housing starts and the existing home sales are expected to increase slightly to 700k and 4.63MM, respectively.

• Euro-zone Crisis and Spanish Bond Auctions

Spain will test investors' confidence in its debt-laden economy this Thursday when it tries to sell new 2- and 10-year bonds after its borrowing costs jumped at auctions last week.
The weak demand for Spanish debt gave markets awake-up call after a couple of months of growing confidence, fed by the 1 trillion euro ($1.3 trillion) wave of cheap 3-year cash pumped out by the European Central Bank since December.

Weekly Performance Summary

All the portfolios declined as results of negative performance of all risk assets during the week.

Table 1: ETF Performance

Table 2: Portfolio Performance

For more information about the multi-asset investment strategies, please visit allseasoninvesting.com.

About ALL SEASON INVESTING: All Season Investing is an investment blog, created in December 2011 to offer investors insights and researches on how to implement a dynamic multi asset allocation strategy with the low-cost index funds or ETFs to achieve consistent returns while limiting downside risks through all stages of a market cycle.

Disclosure: I am long SPY, IWM, EFA, VWO, IYR, AMJ, GLD, GSG, HYG, JNK, AGG, TIP, IEF, TLT, VNQ.

Top Stories Last Week

• Disappointing Spanish bond auction

In an auction of medium-term debt, Spanish government only sold €2.6 billion ($3.5 billion), which was at the bottom end of the €2.5 billion to €3.5 billion target it was looking to raise from the sales of bonds. The ten-year yield rose by 22 basis points to 5.63%. A month ago, the yield was 4.9%. European stock markets tumbled as a result.

• US Economy added 120K jobs, much lower than expected

The U.S. Labor Department said employers added 120,000 jobs, the fewest in five months and much less than the median economist forecast of 205,000. Yields on 10-year Treasuries dropped by 13 basis points and S&P 500 futures tumbled 1.1%.

• Global PMI manufacturing reports

PMI manufacturing indexes from US to China and UK are showing expansions in manufacturing activities in March, though Euro-zone's manufacturers are continue struggling. Chinese manufacturing index rose to 53.1 up from 51 in February. The March reading in the official report was the fourth consecutive monthly increase. The report has helped to ease concerns about a potential hard landing for the world's No. 2 economy. The US gauge rose 53.4, better than economists' forecasts. It provides further sign on the world's largest economy's gaining a stronger foothold.

• ECB, BOE, RBA kept interest rates on hold

European Central Bank, Bank of England and Reserve Bank of Australia kept interest rates on hold at 1%, 0.5% and 4.25%, respectively, though all of them recognized the improving outlooks of the economies.

Top Stories to Watch This Week

• Global Inflation Reports

The US, Germany and China will report consumer price index. Watch out for signs of inflation picking up.

China: CPI is expected to increase to 3.4% from 3.2% YOY.

Germany: CPI is expected to decline to 2.1% from 2.3% YOY.

US: CPI is expected to decline to 2.6% from 2.9%.

• Chinese GDP

Chinese economy is expected to slowdown further to 8.4% from 8.9% last quarter.

• Bank of Japan meeting

Bank of Japan will meet to decide monetary policy and is expected to keep interest rate unchanged at 0.1%.

Weekly Performance Summary

All the portfolios declined slightly as results of negative performance of all risk assets during the week.

Table 1: ETF Performance

Table 2: Weekly Portfolio Performance

For more information about the multi-asset investment strategies, please visit allseasoninvesting.com.

About ALL SEASON INVESTING: All Seasin Investing is an investment blog, created in December 2011 to offer investors insights and researches on how to implement a dynamic multi asset allocation strategy with the low-cost index funds or ETFs to achieve consistent returns while limiting downside risks through all stages of a market cycle.

Disclosure: I am long SPY, IWM, EFA, VWO, IYR, AMJ, GLD, GSG, HYG, JNK, AGG, TIP, IEF, TLT, VNQ.

Top Stories Last Week

• Global equity markets netted one of their biggest first-quarter rise in a decade

Global equity markets finished one of the best quarters in a decade. S&P 500 index rallied by 12.7%, while MSCI EAFE and Emerging market indices were up by 10.8% and 13.8%, respectively. Market volatility dropped significantly. The U.S. economy finally got a decent footing. Greek orderly default relieved concerns on the contagion of European debt crisis. Chinese economy showed further signs of slowdown, but no sign of hard landing. Going into the second quarter, the questions will remain the same: how sustainable the US growth will be? How other European countries like Italy, Spain and Portugal handle their debts and fiscal deficits? How slow the Chinese economy will become? Any news related to these questions will drive the market performance.

(Click to enlarge)

• Bernanke: the improvement in the labor market may not sustainable

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said in a speech to the National Association for Business Economics that improvement in the labor market might not be able to be sustained, "We cannot yet be sure that the recent pace of improvement in the labor market will be sustained," said Bernanke. "There are a lot of things happening in the labor market we don't fully understand." Investors saw the speech as indication of further monetary easing or continuation of current ultra-easy policy.

• Euro-zone increased the rescue funds

Euro-zone finance ministers agreed to raise the lending capacity of the region's rescue funds to 700 billion euros ($934 billion) from €500 billion in an effort to boost the firewall for containing European sovereign debt crisis. Financial markets reacted positively to the announcement on Friday. Italian and Spanish bond yield came down slightly.

• US consumer confidence close to one-year high

An improving job market and stock market gains helped keep consumer confidence close to the highest level in a year in March as more Americans said they planned to buy cars, homes and appliances. The Conference Board's consumer confidence index was 70.2 this month, in line with expectation.

• Japanese industrial production dropped by 1.2%

Japanese government released data showing Japan's industrial production fell a worse-than-expected 1.2 percent, the first decline in three month on Friday. Asian stock markets drifted lower after the announcement.

• German IFO business confidence survey

The Munich-based Ifo institute said today German business climate index, based on a survey of 7,000 executives, rose to 109.8 from a revised 109.7 in February, an eight-month high, suggesting Europe's largest economy will return to growth. Germany's benchmark DAX share index has rallied by 18% in the first quarter.

Top Stories to Watch This Week

• US nonfarm payroll and unemployment rate

US economy is expected to add 211K jobs in March and unemployment rate to stay at 8.3%.

• Global PMI manufacturing data

PMI manufacturing index will released in several countries. Look for signs of Chinese economic slowdown and European contraction.

China: Official PMI number is expected to be 50.5.

Euro-zone: 47.7

United Kingdom: 50.7

US: 53.5

• ECB, BOE, RBA meetings

European Central Bank, Bank of England and Reserve Bank of Australia will meet and are expected to keep interest rates on hold at 1%, 0.5% and 4.25%, respectively.

Weekly Performance Summary

All the portfolios except the Defensive Portfolio declined slightly as results of negative performance of EFA, VWO, AMJ, and GSG during the week.

Table 1: ETF Performance

Table 2: Weekly Portfolio Performance

About ALL SEASON INVESTING: All Seasin Investing (ASI) is an investment blog, created in December 2011 to offer investors insights and researches on how to implement a dynamic multi asset allocation strategy with the low-cost index funds or ETFs to achieve consistent returns while limiting downside risks through all stages of a market cycle.

Disclosure: I am long SPY, IWM, EFA, VWO, IYR, AMJ, GLD, GSG, HYG, JNK, AGG, TIP, IEF, TLT, VNQ.