On February 8, 2007, exactly one decade ago today, shares of New Century Financial, a former darling of not just Wall Street but the mainstream, plunged 37% in panicky trading. The day before, February 7, New Century reported expectations for loan production for 2007 to be 20% below 2006 levels. But the real bombshell was the reasoning for that guidance, [...]
Over the years, the “wealth effect” has been taken as a core component of monetary policy. Central bankers will not admit it, of course, but particularly stock prices are a central element of their strategy. It almost has to be that way given that the modern version of econometrics applies rational expectations theory as a literal condition. Since expectations form [...]
One of the articles referenced in Janet Yellen’s Jackson Hole speech last week was a piece written for the Peterson Institute for International Economics by Senior Fellow Olivier Blanchard. Dr. Blanchard has, as noted earlier today, all the “right” credentials, which is why his conjecture gets included into the speeches of Federal Reserve Chairmen. Having taught at both Harvard and [...]
The housing market has failed to perform as expected on either side. Instead, as far as a broader set of measures, real estate is in a bit of stasis, neither really growing nor falling apart. Given the set of mainstream economic expectations, that is confounding and could ultimately be a problem. If the economy is really growing, it should be [...]
Having now passed the anniversary of the “rising dollar”, it is interesting to see the related and continued effects on the stock bubble(s). As should be obvious by now, stock buybacks, funded via corporate bonds and loosely categorized C&I loans, are responsible for the post-QE3 nearly uninterrupted rise. Repurchases are forming a separate “liquidity” conduit, indirect leverage if you will, [...]
In April 2008, Nassim Taleb was becoming a household name criticizing the quant dominance in finance. Bear Stearns had just failed and the entire edifice of mathematical order was still breaking down, as the last bastions of credit default swap “supply”, the monoline insurers, were still rumored to be heading for insolvency (while the nightly news focused on whether that [...]
No inflection is ever expected in the real economy since everything is always extrapolated in straight lines by orthodox economists using econometrics. Similar interpretations are being used in stocks, and not just in the “earnings recession” that is already declared “unexpected.” In terms of share prices, there is little doubt about what is holding up the S&P 500 and larger [...]
It had been relatively quiet in China apart from the continued downtrend in economic activity and especially expectations for economic activity. Earlier, as industrial production and a slew of other economic accounts fell to multi-year (and multi-decade in some cases) lows, talk of the Chinese bubbles receded as it was viewed almost a surety that the PBOC would now be [...]
Price momentum is usually the key factor in any asset bubble, as it takes sustained ascent to draw in more and more participants. If price acceleration begins to falter, the discussion and bemusement (for some) about who might end up the Greater Fool becomes paramount. But that is not a straight-line process either, nor is it with price momentum. In [...]
The Census Bureau is seemingly out to prove the point that monthly variations in home sales data are really meaningless. Downward revisions after last month’s curious “surge” in new home sales place the trend right back in the rut it has exhibited for a year and a half now. Given that single family home construction has likewise stagnated, the revisions [...]
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