A new study offers encouraging results for a strategy of monitoring the business cycle as a tool for enhancing investment returns (or at least limiting losses). “Over the period 1970-2015, investment returns were enhanced by merely knowing concurrently whether the economy was in a state of expansion or contraction, and making the most basic asset allocation decision of whether to be in stocks or bonds,” write a trio of professors in a recent paper (“Does it Pay to Forecast the Business Cycle? A U.S. Update and an International Perspective”).
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For a second week in a row, all the broad categories of global markets posted gains. Led by a sharp advance in foreign government bonds in developed markets, the major asset classes dispensed a clean sweep of price increases, based on a set of exchange-traded products.
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● Rethinking the Economics of Land and Housing
By Josh Ryan-Collins, et al.
Summary via publisher (Zed Books)
Why are house prices in many advanced economies rising faster than incomes? Why isn’t land and location taught or seen as important in modern economics? What is the relationship between the financial system and land? In this accessible but provocative guide to the economics of land and housing, the authors reveal how many of the key challenges facing modern economies – including housing crises, financial instability and growing inequalities – are intimately tied to the land economy. Looking at the ways in which discussions of land have been routinely excluded from both housing policy and economic theory, the authors show that in order to tackle these increasingly pressing issues a major rethink by both politicians and economists is required.
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The Capital Spectator is traveling for the rest of the week. The usual routine may resume with Saturday’s Book Bits, definitely on Monday with the weekly wrap on the major asset classes. Meantime, stay cool.

The recent run of soft economic data inspires some pundits to claim that a new recession is brewing. They could be right, but they could just as easily be wrong. Although some numbers published to date have been weaker than expected, a broad profile of economic activity still reflects low recession risk. Near-term projections tell a similar story. From a probability standpoint, betting that a recession has started or is about to start still stacks up as a long shot.
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Estimates for next week’s “advance” report on GDP growth for the second quarter continue to point to a rebound after Q1’s sluggish pace, but the outlook has been revised down in recent weeks.
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All the major asset classes were higher last week, led by stocks in emerging markets. Reversing widespread losses from the previous week, all the broad categories of global markets advanced in the five trading days through July 14, based on a set of exchange-traded products.
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● Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future
Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson
Review via The Economist
In 2014 Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published “The Second Machine Age”. The book was a balanced portrait of how new digital technologies were poised to improve society, even as they increased unemployment and depressed wages. In their latest work, “Machine, Platform, Crowd”, the authors seek to explain the business implications behind these developments.
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Stocks that exhibit low volatility are prized as a risk factor that’s expected to beat the broad market over time with a smoother rise, according to academic research and countless backtests. Real-world returns, however, reflect mixed results in recent years, based on representative ETFs. Meanwhile, some analysts have been warning in recent months that low-vol stocks climbed too far too fast and are vulnerable to a correction. The warning carries more weight these days in the wake of low vol’s stumble relative to equities generally and other factor strategies.
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The US stock market’s ongoing run of low volatility has inspired a torrent of commentary as the crowd struggles to make sense of the trend. Analysts at JP Morgan, for example, recently wrote that “a very low supply of economic surprises currently is by itself enough to explain the low level of market volatility.” Meanwhile, a strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute advised that the slide in volatility isn’t particularly useful for developing insight into future market activity. Whatever an unusually calm stock market implies, or doesn’t imply, here’s one more fact to consider: low vol is widespread across the major asset classes.
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