The pandemic has proven to be less detrimental to corporate profits than expected, thanks to super dovish monetary and fiscal policies.
Global companies are so cash-rich that they are looking to start churning out dividends.
According to a global study by Janus Henderson Investors, as quoted on a Bloomberg article, payouts are expected to touch $1.39 trillion this year, the second-highest total ever.
Janus believes that dividends will touch pre-pandemic highs within a year.
Mining companies remain among the biggest dividends payers, benefiting from the revival in commodity prices. Half of the restored payouts in Europe were from banks, Janus said.
Now that dividend hikes are back, investors can look at the below-mentioned dividend ETFs:
Some 25 years after its founding, the firm -- its assets headed to a mere $350 million or so by the end of March -- on Sunday filed for bankruptcy protection in New York
Argentina, Mozambique, Barbados and the Republic of Congo have two things in common: They’ve all restructured their debt, and they’ve all tangled with Greylock Capital Management.
Now Greylock, one of the best-known hedge funds in emerging markets investing, finds itself at a similar crossroads. Some 25 years after its founding, the firm -- its assets headed to a mere $350 million or so by the end of March -- on Sunday filed for bankruptcy protection in New York. The firm is seeking to end its lease in midtown Manhattan after investors pulled their money following three years of losses, most recently stemming from the pandemic.
It’s a humbling turnaround for the hedge fund, which made a name for itself for its deep expertise and as one of the more outspoken firms in the emerging-market space, punching well above its weight. While the firm has no plans to shut down, it’s operating at a fraction of its former self: a staff of nine, down from 21 in 2017, and assets at about 30% of their $1.1 billion peak. Paying $100,000 in monthly rent for now-unused Manhattan offices was becoming untenable. ...
Altogether, Greylock’s partners have participated in over 50 creditor committees in more than 30 countries, dating back to the 1980s and early 1990s, including restructuring the debt of several countries into Brady Bonds.
Its more notable deals include Greece, where Greylock was the only U.S. creditor on the steering committee to negotiate the nation’s debt restructuring. The hedge fund also co-chaired a steering committee before Argentina’s notorious 2005 debt restructuring, and was among bondholders that rejected that 30-cent offer. The firm’s partners have been involved with no less than five workouts in Argentina. …
Poor Performance
The firm was digging itself out of 3% losses in 2019 from private credit trades gone awry and tighter oil sanctions that pummeled Venezuelan debt when the Covid-19 pandemic hit. The flagship fund plunged about 14% last year as the virus slammed risk assets. Losses were led by Argentina and Venezuela, while the firm continued to write off some private credit trades, according to Mediratta.
Investor withdrawals were mostly spurred by the poor performance. The firm was stung by one particularly large withdrawal by an institution concerned with socially responsible investing that didn’t like the optics of being invested in countries such as Mozambique.
In the absence of new money, assets will drop to about $350 million at the end of March. Despite the recent losses, Greylock’s flagship fund has had annualized returns of 11% since its inception, beating the average hedge fund and JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s benchmark emerging-market debt index over the same span.
Sovereign wealth funds, private equity and asset managers have been left in limbo after investing $10.3bn into Ant International, a subsidiary of the group owned by Jack Ma, in a highly selective, offshore pre-IPO fundraising round in 2018.
Underan arrangement between Ant and its so-called international Class C investors,the cash was put into an offshoresubsidiary that owns nothing.Aside from not having voting rights, there is little detail of the commercial terms of the agreement in Ant’s heavily redacted IPO prospectus.
The result is that investors in Ant International are “screwed”, said one lawyer with direct knowledge ofthe situation.
A Gold Stock Fund and Other Investment Tips by Jeffrey Gundlach - Barron's
#Gundlach Likes #Gold
A Gold Stock Fund and Other Investment Tips by Jeffrey Gundlach - Barron's
Jeffrey Gundlach: I do things a little differently, being a nonstockpicker guy. A lot of people thought that the dollar would go up because the Federal Reserve is planning on raising interest rates while other central banks are not.This misses the fact that there is no correlation between short-term central-bank behavior and the dollar. The correlation that does exist is between what the market thinks the Fed is going to do about 18 months ahead and how the dollar moves. As expectations change toward the end of this year and into 2020, they will likely correlate with the dollar's move to the downside.
Mario Gabelli
Chairman and CEO
Gamco Investors
Rye, NY
Jeffrey Gundlach
CEO and CIO
DoubleLine Capital
Los Angeles
The Fed predicted four federal-funds rate increases of 25 basis points [0.25 percent] in 2018, and for a while the bond market was skeptical, but the Fed won out and executed on its plan. But now, Fed members forecast two rate increases in 2019, and the market is expecting virtually none. I think the Fed is already showing signs of capitulation, and so it's likely that the dollar will go down.
Also, there is a massive bullish position in the dollar; it has existed since the summer. The bullish position is now the same as it was in late 2016, just before the initial big decline in the dollar from its peak. Also, a weak dollar correlates extremely strongly to rising budget deficits and trade deficits. Just to refresh your memory, our national debt went up to $22 trillion at year-end 2018. It was at $21.5 trillion three months earlier. It was at $20.2 trillion a year before. So that is definitely in the mix.
Which investments do best in a weak-dollar environment?
Gundlach: A weak dollar also correlates strongly to emerging market equity outperformance. The MSCI Emerging Markets index hasn't done anything in a while. It is lower than it was in 2007 and 2011. I am recommending the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets exchange-traded fund [ticker: EEM]. Now, if you are as negative as some of us are on the prospects for risk assets, don't just go long the ETF, but hedge it by shorting the S&P 500 via the SPDR S&P 500 [SPY].
Jeffrey Gundlach's Picks
Source: Bloomberg
Here is an interesting thing [holds up a chart of the S&P 500 and the MSCI Emerging Markets indexes]: I "normalized" charts of the S&P 500 and the MSCI Emerging Markets indexes to Jan. 26, 2018, the peak for global markets and the NYSE Composite Index. You will notice that, for a long time after Jan. 26, the S&P 500 outperformed the global stock market, excluding the U.S. In the fourth-quarter rout, however, emerging markets started to outperform. Emerging markets aren't a value trap anymore. Even with the headwind of a strong dollar, they are outperforming.
Editors' Choice
How much does that performance owe to China's market, which has stopped going down?
Gundlach: China is a factor, but emerging markets are outperforming the U.S. broadly in recent months.
What else does well when the dollar weakens? Well, you might want to buy gold. I turned bullish on gold in the middle of last year at $1,196 an ounce. [Gold was trading at $1,286 on Jan. 4.] Gold and commodities broadly should benefit this year, although I worry about the economic scenario for industrial commodities. To be aggressive, you could buy the VanEck Vectors Gold Miners ETF [GDX]. It is a leveraged play on the price of gold. That is what I recommend.
In the bond market, I don't like to tout DoubleLine's products, so I'll go with a low-cost, one- to four-year average maturity U.S. Treasury fund. How that's for unsexy? It's Vanguard Short-Term Federal fund [VSGBX]. I don't invest in anything with a maturity of five years or longer. I'm concerned about U.S. budget problems leading to a potentially much steeper yield curve, so I want to stay relatively short term. The Vanguard fund is a laddered fund. As bonds mature, the money is reinvested. You will compound your gains if interest rates go higher. Those are my picks: If you buy gold, and own the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (hedged with the S&P 500 for bearish investors), and buy this bond fund, you'll sleep pleasantly at night.
Henry Ellenbogen: What kind of economic environment is it in which the emerging-markets ETF does well and the U.S. stock market doesn't do well?
Gundlach: The dollar falls; that's the key.
Lastly, I have an anti-recommendation. It is too expensive to short. Don't buy junk bonds. Get out of junk bonds.
Mario Gabelli: Particularly leveraged junk-bond ETFs.
Some 25 years after its founding, the firm -- its assets headed to a mere $350 million or so by the end of March -- on Sunday 
