Bloomberg (May 2)
“Money managers turned the most bullish since May as West Texas Intermediate crude climbed to a five-month high on optimism that falling U.S. production and rising fuel demand will trim the global glut.” Their optimism may be both short-sighted and short-lived as OPEC just “boosted production by 484,000 barrels a day to 33.217 million in April, the most in monthly data going back to 1989.”
Tags: Bullish, Crude, Demand, Money managers, OPEC, Optimism, Production, U.S., West Texas Intermediate
The Economist (November 28)
We may be witnessing “the rise and fall of the unicorns” as unlisted technology companies begin to learn that valuations don’t always go up. “Technology companies are unlikely to experience a meltdown as severe as the housing crisis, but an industry that only yesterday was all promise and optimism is showing signs of cooling.”
Tags: Housing crisis, Meltdown, Optimism, Technology, Unicorns, Unlisted, Valuations
The Economist (July 12)
“Electronics companies in Japan are starting to turn themselves around, but they are a shadow of their former selves…. After years of denial that surgery was needed, optimism is rising that Japan’s consumer-electronics firms are facing up to their steady loss of global market share.”
Tags: Consumer electronics, Denial, Electronics, Japan, Loss, Market share, Optimism, Surgery, Turn around
Financial Times (October 25)
“A painful and protracted hangover from the financial crisis has slashed demand for cars in Europe, forcing mainstream manufacturers to close factories, lay off workers and fill their financial statements with red ink.” Despite these measures, however, the industry is still struggling with overcapacity, compelling many global automakers to subsidize European losses with sales elsewhere. Providing a glimmer of optimism for Europe, however, Ford “called the bottom of the disastrous market slump on Thursday, the first carmaker confident enough to turn tentative hopes into official profit guidance and draw a financial line under six years of falling sales.”
Tags: Automakers, Carmakers, Demand, Europe, Factories, Financial Crisis, Ford, Guidance, Losses, Manufacturers, Optimism, Overcapacity, Sales, Workers
Institutional Investor (June issue)
“Optimism is beginning to infect Japan’s corporate leaders–a crucial factor considering that the new policies must spur corporate investment and expansion if they are to succeed in fostering a sustainable economic turnaround.” Corporate leaders have welcomed Abenomics, but the jury is still out. “Corporate Japan will consider the new government successful if it can end the psychology of deflation and stagnation and offer the prospect of renewed growth. So far, business leaders are fairly optimistic.”
Tags: Corporate leaders, Deflation, Expansion, Government, Investment, Japan, Optimism, Psychology, Stagnation
Financial Times (February 1)
“Europe enjoyed the first month of 2013 in a mood of relative optimism – a relief after years where one financial near-death experience followed the other. The fissile market pressures on the eurozone are slowly going into reverse, with private money leaving havens and returning to the periphery. Yet clouds continue to clump over the region’s banks. Even if the debt crisis gradually abates, Europe is far from done with cleaning up its banking system.”
Tags: Banks, Debt crisis, Europe, eurozone, Optimism
Barron’s (November 5)
“It has been an eventful year in Brazil, though perhaps not in the way investors would have liked. The country’s growth has stalled to an expected 1.5% this year—a figure not exactly befitting an emerging market, especially one that not so long ago had been growing at four times that rate.” Despite the bad economic news, however, four experts assembled at a Barron’s roundtable believe Brazil investors have “reason for optimism.”
Tags: Brazil, Emerging market, Growth, Investors, Optimism
Time (May 26)
Most of us are irrationally optimistic. “Neuroscience and social science suggest that we are more optimistic than realistic,” which is both good and bad. “Overly positive assumptions can lead to disastrous miscalculations….But the bias also protects and inspires us: it keeps us moving forward…. Without optimism, our ancestors might never have ventured far from their tribes and we might all be cave dwellers, still huddled together and dreaming of light and heat.”
Tags: Assumptions, Bias, Miscalculations, Neuroscience, Optimism
Time (November 1)
Fareed Zakaria, Time’s Editor-at-Large, notes that when he leaves the U.S. to visit India, it appears “the world has been turned upside down. Indians are brimming with hope and faith in the future.” In contrast, the mood in the U.S. is “sour. Americans are glum, dispirited and angry…. The can-do country is convinced that it can’t.”
