The Wonderful Warning of OZ
The global supply chain is pretty well established at this point, particularly in the years since the obvious dollar devaluation (Y2K and forward). Commodity countries like the BRICs (South Africa only gets included in BRICS when gold is mentioned) ship to manufacturing centers in the east, primarily China, that assemble and manufacture for further embarkation .. read more
Confessions Of A Gloomy Gus
I have recently been accused of being a paid up member of the gloom and doom club. Well, actually accused might be too strong; informed is probably more accurate. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about how these weekly missives might be perceived but based on recent feedback the perception out there seems .. read more
Tactical Update
Global Opportunities Initiate CHK Our portfolio has recently been focused on technology and healthcare and underweight energy. There is room to add a value energy stock and we think natural gas has more room to run. Rig counts are down. We are seeing steady price increases in the physical. Natural gas is a clean fuel .. read more
A Closer Look: Market Cap
The S&P 500 Cap-Weighted Index ((IVV)) has had an scorching start to the year, breaking the 1600 level and in the process surpassing its all-time highs set in 2007 in this past week. Since correcting in the middle of April, the index bounced off support at the 50-day moving average in emphatic fashion, finally clearing .. read more
Sunday Gold Fix – The Travails of Paper Gold
The alchemists of Dark Ages lore had nothing on Wall Street. Like everything else in financial evolution, it begins as a good idea and gets warped and bastardized into a means of scalping “free money” for banks. This is particularly true in the age of prop accounts and banks masquerading as prudent intermediaries but operating .. read more
The Proper Perspective on Jobs and Income
The headline employment growth for May 1974 totaled 165,000 jobs. That followed a weaker report from April where only 89,000 new jobs were created. Only a few months before, the headline beancount of job quantity was 304,000. For the seven months between November 1973 and May 1974, the headline averaged +135,000. That was notable because .. read more
Closer Look at Q1 GDP
Joe covered the GDP release for Q1 2013 earlier where he noted that: “While on the surface that seems better than the 4th quarter rate of 0.4%, the details were actually worse in many ways.” I wanted to follow up with one of those “worse” features – consumer spending on housing “services”. This is a .. read more
Might Draghi Know Something?
The rumors of the ECB rate cut had become rather ubiquitous in the past few weeks. Confidence in the European economy has been indirectly proportionate to those rumors, particularly as Germany seems to be heading south again after a short-lived reprieve. France is just a downright mess. But the rate cuts that were just announced .. read more
