Sunday, July 28, 2019

Exodus: Foreigners Stop Buying South Florida Homes, Sales Crash 50%

A massive pullback in international buyers purchasing US real estate has been seen in the last several years, resulting in the softening of housing markets across South Florida, reported The Palm Beach Post.
Foreign buyers purchased a $153 billion in US homes from April 2016 to March 2017, total sales of homes to international buyers dropped to $121 billion for the year ending in March 2018, then plunged to $77.9 billion for the year ending on March 2019, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) said in its latest report.
Florida transactions involving foreign buyers fell to 36,000 in the year ending in March 2019, down from 50,000 the previous year, and 60,000 in the year ending March 2017.
"The magnitude of the decline is quite striking, implying less confidence in owning a property in the US," NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said in a statement.
South Florida is a top destination for foreign buyers, accounting for 20% of the 183,100 international transactions nationwide over the past year.
Capital flight from Latin America over the past decade has driven at least a quarter of Florida's real estate market, but new trends today suggest foreigners are abandoning US markets with home prices in bubble territory.
"It takes a lot more pounds to buy an American property than it did a few years ago," said John Mike, an agent at RE/MAX Prestige Realty in Royal Palm Beach.
Mike said a stronger dollar that stated to rise in 2014 had deterred many buyers from Britain and Europe who are now increasingly buying vacation homes in Spain and the Bahamas rather than Florida.
Mike said President Trump's crackdown on immigration and a dangerous trade war with China had hampered demand. He added that international buyers "don't feel welcome" in America anymore because of President Trump's policies - so they are going elsewhere.
The exodus of foreign buyers and crashing sales explains why homes in South Florida are experiencing the most significant percentage of price cuts in some time, that has led to properties staying on the market for longer, and has tipped the overall market to buyers. All of this suggests that a top could be near.

Discount Currency Transfers

Monday, July 15, 2019

The growth of alternative asset management into Crypto

Alternative Assets are growing strong.  Perhaps it is part of the reason why Bitcoin was so popular with investors.  The amount of places you can get good returns on your money are dwindling.  They are there – it’s just that they are changing.  Traditional markets may return enough just to stay ahead of inflation – but they also bear the risk of losing.  So in the long run, traditional investing is a net loss in the opinion of many investors.

There has been hesitation among traditional asset managers to add Crypto to their portfolio.  However,there are a growing number of Crypto only asset managers that offer Crypto friendly features like pseudo-anonymity, like AMFEIX.   Some will argue about the differences between these managers & funds vs. the traditional asset classes, but it’s not about a compare and contrast.  It’s about evolution.  Capitalism at its core is about evolution.

Capitalism knows no boundaries, it knows no countries, no loyalty.  It only knows that it has to evolve in order to survive.  Crypto is an interesting question because of the regulation involved.  Basically, being pseudo-anonymous is not always a good thing.  Because Crypto is unregulated (or to say differently, is not controlled by a government regulator) it provides the possibility for fraud.  Just have a look at what President Trump has to say about Crypto:

This is actually a positive comment for Crypto, because there are a number of new stable coins that use the US Dollar as a management reserve.  Crypto has a bad reputation due to Bitcoin, but Crypto is much more than Bitcoin, as we have seen recently in the markets.

Managing money is not easy.  The Barclay Hedge Index is roughly flat or slightly negative in the past years.  There are many fallacies of alternative investments, as explained on Zero Hedge:

Just because something is ‘different’ doesn’t make it ‘better’ – just because something is not mainstream doesn’t make it ‘honest.’  We all here agree that mainstream investing sucks, but do we use the same rational methodology when evaluating alternatives?  Crypto has proven this is not the case.  Investors lost their minds and did all the things they have been told not to do over the years.

Managers are exploring more markets – and one of those is Crypto.  While Crypto is not an asset class per se, it can be.  Crypto broadens the horizons of the manager, so that there are more markets to trade.  And Crypto sure is volatile!  That’s risky, but it’s also potentially profitable.

Also there’s a growing number of Crypto millionaires that simply feel more comfortable investing in the market where they made their money.

While the traditional fund management industry is dying – another one is being born.  Just like Bitcoin came out of no where, new fund managers and strategies are going to dominate the next decade.  Traditional funds like FX Concepts and others, have been closed. 

Global Intel Hub is going to keep an eye out on emerging managers in the Crypto space.