Henry Ma's  Instablog

Top Stories Last Week

• Markets Fell For the Third Week on Concerns about Greek Exit

U.S. stocks fell again last week as concern about Greece's possible exit from the euro zone kept investors on edge. After the failed attempts to form a new government, the Greek will hold another election in mid June. The anti-austerity parties may gain more seats in the new election. That will raise the possibility of Greek's exit from Euro, whose impacts on the European banking system and economies are highly unpredictable. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed the week off 3.5%. The S&P 500 Index shed 4.3% and the Nasdaq Composite Index ended the week down 5.3%.

• Moody's Downgraded 16 Spanish Banks

Moody's Investor Service downgraded 16 Spanish banks on Thursday, including Banco Santander, the euro zone's largest bank, citing a recessionary economy and the government's reduced ability to support troubled banks. All the banks' long-term debt ratings were downgraded by at least one notch, and some suffered three-notch cuts. Santander was cut by three notches to A3 from Aa3. Spanish ten-year government bonds are traded at 6.2%, almost 5% higher than German Bunds.

• US Inflation Was Flat in April

Inflation was flat, as declining energy prices offset minor increases in other categories. The U.S. Consumer Price Index, a key measure of inflation, showed overall, consumer prices were unchanged from March to April. Energy and utility prices were the biggest factor keeping inflation tame, falling 1.7% in the month. This confirms the Fed's forecast and helps the Fed keep its dovish stand until 2014.

• Retail Sales Rose in April at the Slowest Pace in 2012

Retail sales rose in April at the slowest pace of the year as US consumers took a break from a shopping spree induced by unseasonably warm weather in prior months. The 0.1 percent gain followed a 0.7 percent increase in March. The April number was in line with the median forecast.

• US Housing Starts Bettered Expectation

U.S. home builders broke ground on more homes last month, evidence that the housing market is slowly healing. The Commerce Department said Wednesday that builders started building at a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 717K homes in April. That's 2.6 percent more than March's total. Construction rose for both single-family homes and apartments.

• Euro-zone Economy Had Zero Growth in the First Quarter

Eurozone GDP growth came in at 0.0%. That's better than median estimates, which were calling for a slight contraction. Stronger growth in Germany was enough to help the European Union and the 17-nation eurozone avoid falling into recession for the second time since 2009 during the first three months of this year. Germany managed to grow its GDP by 0.5% in the first quarter of 2012.

• Facebook IPO

Facebook raised in excess of $18.4 billion in its initial public offering pricing at $38/share. It sold more than 421.2 million shares. The debut was marred by technical trading issues at Nasdaq as the market digested the largest tech IPO in history. Traders had to wait for hours to get their confirmations back. The shares ended up 23 cents, at $38.23 on Friday.

Top Stories to Watch This Week

• G8 Leaders Want a "Strong and Cohesive" Eurozone with Greece

During the G8 summit in Camp David this weekend, G8 leaders have expressed hope that debt-stricken Greece will remain in the eurozone and vowed to "take all necessary steps" to fight the deepening economic turmoil in Europe. They welcomed the discussions in Europe to balance debt reduction with measures to support growth. The leaders also stressed the importance of a "strong and cohesive" eurozone and reaffirmed their interest in Greece staying in eurozone while keeping its commitments to reduce its deficits.

• US Home Sales

Analysts expect the new home sales and existing home sales to improve slightly in April by 2.1 percent and 3.1 percent, respectively. The battered housing markets may show signs of slow recovery.

• Risks on Spanish Banks

Last week, the Spanish government told the banks to add a $39 billion to cover potential losses on property loans and announced an independent audit on the banks' balance sheets. Any developments will have impacts on the markets.

Weekly Performance Summary

All the portfolios declined in the week as results of negative performance across all the risk assets, marking the worst weekly performance for the year.

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

• Failure to Form a New Government in Greece Renewed Concerns on European Debt Crisis

Anti-austerity parties gained more seats in the Greek parliamentary elections on Sunday. Syriza, the Coalition of the Radical Left, won 16 % of the vote, projections showed. That exceeded the 13% won by socialist Pasok, one of the two main political parties. The conservative New Democracy topped the poll with 20%. During the week, the efforts of forming a coalition government by all three parties have failed because the pro- and the anti-bailout parties could not reach an agreement in the hung parliament. New elections will probably be held in June. EU leaders have warned that without a government backing the 130-billion euro rescue plan agreed in March, Greece would stop getting bailout and could find itself pushed out of the euro. Many analysts concluded that the chances of Greece's exit from euro were rising.

Global stock markets tumbled for the week as continued fears about the uncertainties on Greece and economic crisis in Europe drove the S&P 500 Index down by 1.2% on the week. MSCI EAFE Index and Emerging Market Index also slumped by 2.1% and 3.4% respectively.

• J.P. Morgan Slumped After $2 Billion Unexpected Trading Loss

Shares of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. dropped by more than 9% on Friday, hit by the bank's revelation that it had incurred a $2 billion trading loss. In its chief investment office, the bank had suffered a pretax trading loss of about $2 billion on its synthetic credit positions. It was a surprise to investors and an embarrassment to Jamie Dimon, the J.P. Morgan's CEO, who dismissed the concern earlier.

• Disney Shares Reached All-Time High

Shares of Walt Disney Co. reached their all-time high after the company reported strong earnings growth on Tuesday, driven by rising revenues at ESPN, and promised to capitalize on the runaway success of "The Avengers." Shares were traded as high as $45.80 on Wednesday.

• Bank of England Kept Monetary Policy Unchanged

The Bank of England kept its base interest rate at 0.5% on Thursday, and did not approve any additional monetary stimulus, despite Britain's falling back into recession, on the concern over persistently above-target consumer price inflation, currently at 3.5%.

Top Stories to Watch This Week

• US Inflation and Retail Sales

Analysts expect the headline Consumer Price Index is to increase by 0.1% in April, slower pace than last month. This will helps the Fed to maintain its ultra-loose monetary policy until 2014.

Retails sales, the gauge about US consumers, are expected to rise by 0.2% in April, much lower than in March.

• US Housing Starts

US Housing Starts in April is expected to improve slightly to 0.69MM. The housing market recovery will have a long way to go.

• Greece's Efforts to Form a New Government

Market-watchers will continue monitoring the situation in Greece. Any developments on Greek's promise to stick to the austerity measures may have impacts on the markets.

• Euro-zone GDP

Most analysts expect that Euro-zone economy contracted 0.2% in the first quarter as results of continued debt crisis.

• Facebook IPO

Facebook is expected to make its debut late this week. The upcoming IPO, which is expected to value the company at around $95 billion, is the biggest technology IPO since Google went public in 2004

Weekly Performance Summary

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

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

• US Added 115K Jobs in April, Disappointing the Markets

Hiring in the US slowed down in April as only 115K jobs were created in April, sharply below expectation. The unemployment rate dipped to 8.1%, but mostly because some 342K people had dropped out of the labor force. Most economists believe that the US is on a pace of adding 100k to 200k jobs per month in 2012, consistent with the sluggish economic growth of about 2%. The US stocks markets ended the worst week of 2012, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 index retreated 1.4% and 2.1%, respectively.

• Manufacturing Activities Were Strengthening in US, Slowing in China and Weakening in Europe

US manufacturing activities expanded at a fastest rate in half a year. A monthly index compiled by the Institute for Supply Management showed a 54.8 reading, the largest gain since November 2011. In China, the official purchasing managers' index for manufacturing rose to 53.3 last month, its highest in more than a year, suggesting that Chinese economy is on track for a soft landing. In Europe, the economic activities declined at a faster pace than expected in April, according to PMI survey. The index slumped to 45.9. European recession is getting deeper as Spanish economy declined for the second quarter and was officially in recession. We believe that the divergences of economic performance across the major economic blocs will continue.

• ECB kept interest rates unchanged, Reserve Bank of Australia lowered interest rates by 50 basis points unexpectedly

The European Central Bank kept its key interest rates unchanged at 1% in its monthly meeting Thursday, consistent with market expectation. It did not give any indication on any new three-year loans to banks, or LTRO, despite its positive impact on market liquidity.

Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) surprised the markets with 50 basis points cut on its benchmark interest from 4.25% to 3.75%. The RBA also lowered its growth and inflation forecasts as weak job and housing markets keep price gains in check. One of the world's largest commodity-exporting economies is suffering from Chinese economic slowdown.

Top Stories to Watch This Week

• Earning season is winding down. CISCO and Disney will report earnings this week

Among the companies which have reported, 80% of them beat earning expectations. U.S. corporate profits have returned to prerecession levels of about 15 percent of gross domestic product, according to a report by the International Institute for Labour Studies released on Friday. This week, some bellwether corporations such as CISCO and Disney will report Q1 earnings.

• French Presidential Election

Socialist François Hollande defeated Nicolas Sarkozy on Sunday to become France's next president. This may have big impacts on how Europe tackles its debt crisis. Hollande wanted to renegotiate a European treaty on budget cuts that Germany's Angela Merkel and Sarkozy had championed.

• Greek Parliamentary Election

Greeks are voting in parliamentary polls on Sunday. The country's two mainstream parties, the centre-left Pasok and centre-right New Democracy, are expected to lose support to anti-austerity candidates. Any political instability may prompt fresh questions over the country's ability to stick to the austerity measures and continue getting the international bailout fund.

• Bank of England Rate Decision

Bank of England's monetary policy committee will meet this week. It is expected to keep interest rate at 0.5% and bond purchase program unchanged.

Weekly Performance Summary

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

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.