Investment "Logic"

Two weeks ago, Citigroup announced first quarter results for 2017.  The company exceeded expectations, as did its peers, by reporting earnings of $1.35 and revenues of $18.12B.  Expectations were for $1.24 and $17.83B respectively.  Revenue growth came from both consumer and institutional banking growth and success.  The Costco card purchase is still working through its steps to realize profits to the company, but it is making good strides and is on track to be accretive in the second half of the year.  Meanwhile the trading arms are having success, helping round out gains overall.  Meanwhile the company continues to shed non-core assets and returned $2.2B to shareholders over the quarter through dividends and share buybacks (about 6% of total outstanding shares over the last year).  These gains resulted in an increase of the TBV to $65.94. It is worth noting that some of these earnings beats are based off of one-time gains, however overall perfo...

 It's been an interesting week as stocks and my portfolio both end up 0.8% higher than last week.  It was a week where I wasn't as able to watch the markets, so I am a little less aware of what's happened.  In general, bank and industrial stocks took a bit of a breather, healthcare seems to have recovered a little and tech was on the rise.  As expected, most of the hoopla was external the markets.  I will say bank impacts appear to be related more to the performance of the ten year treasuries more so than any other factor at this time.  This is likely because there are many that relate the performance of the banks to this rate.  I'm not so sure that's an accurate perception, especially when there's high demand for our treasury for people outside the US.  All in all, I consider what I've seen to be nothing more than a ho-hum week where the month and first quarter were coming to an end, so professionals were most likely paying attention to prep...