1.The 3^rd Longest Bull Market Ever is Still Lacking IPOs

Barron’s

The dearth of companies making their trading debuts is an unusual feature of what has been a record run for the stock market. In the heady 1990s, there were an average of 436 IPOs per year in the U.S., based on Ritter’s data. Last year, there were just 74. A number of reasons have been cited, including increased regulations and scrutiny for public companies, as well as the deluge of private capital.

The flood of private money is overwhelming ..Stat of week

FOR NOW, IT’S HARD to blame entrepreneurs for holding back on IPOs. The flood of private capital has changed the calculus. In one example, Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group has raised over $93 billion for a technology investment fund. Those dollars alone exceed the $84 billion in total proceeds raised in U.S. IPOs since the start of 2015.

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https://www.barrons.com/articles/unicorns-what-are-they-really-worth-1510974129

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1.Investors Starting to Go “All In”

From Dave Lutz at Jones.

Investors around the globe are increasingly showing signs of “irrational exuberance”, putting more chips on the table even as they worry equities markets have become “overvalued”, according a closely watched survey by Bank of America Merrill Lynch – Forty-eight per cent of investors in BofA Merrill’s November survey said that equities are “overvalued”, a record proportion that has sent the three-month moving average above the level that came at the turn of the millennium ahead of the bursting of the dot com bubble.

At the same time, average cash balance among the 178 fund managers with $610bn in combined assets under management that BofA Merrill surveyed slipped to 4.4 per cent from 4.7 per cent. It marked the lowest level in more than four years and was below the 10-year average of 4.5 per cent, FT reports.

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1.Follow Up to Last Week’s Gundlach Comments…High Yield Spreads are 40% Below Their Historical Averages.

http://blog.spdrs.com/

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Traveling again this week…

1. Dow’s 1-year gain since Trump’s win is its biggest post-Election Day rise since 1945

By Victor Reklaitis

That represents its best performance after a White House contest since 1945, when the blue-chip gauge was up 29.83% in a year following the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt and his vice president Harry S. Truman. (FDR died early his fourth term, putting Truman in the Oval Office in April 1945.)

Check out: Good news for the president in latest Trump Scoreboard

The table below from WSJ Market Data Group shows that Calvin Coolidge ranks No. 1 by this measuring stick, FDR gets the silver and bronze medals, Trump is fourth, and Bill Clinton, fifth.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-dows-one-year-gain-since-trumps-election-is-its-biggest-since-1945-2017-11-08

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-dows-one-year-gain-since-trumps-election-is-its-biggest-since-1945-2017-11-08

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1.Tech Companies Now Biggest Market Cap Stocks with Half the Employees of Former Leaders.

Josh Brown

Chart o’ the Day: How quickly things have changed

Posted November 6, 2017 by Joshua M Brown

Your favorite stock; see if it’s a buy, sell or hold opportunity

I came across this infographic from Wharton via 13D Research and I think it makes a powerful point about how quickly things have changed.

One of the biggest posts of the year here on TRB was “Just own the damn robots.“, where I talked about the mood right now surrounding the automation meteor headed right for us. This is another way of understanding the reality:

Getting bigger by market cap – and by revenues – with less people is the new normal. It’s not going back the other way. The only escape for our children is to join the education arms race and hope they choose the right major – or to embrace entrepreneurialism and create their own jobs.

http://thereformedbroker.com/2017/11/06/chart-o-the-day-how-quickly-things-have-changed/
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