With the “dollar” off the ledger as far as a menacing factor, perceptions have begun to shift toward different if still-confused rhetoric. Figuring out fixed income isn’t always straightforward to begin with, but as the “unexpected” flirtation with deflation over the past few months threw a huge wrench into the economic boom supposedly forming the world over, the temptation now [...]
None of the following is unexpected given the “unexpected” nature of retail sales contradicting everything that was expected. Consumers are not acting like they “should” as the unemployment rate describes its version of the economy. From Bloomberg: Purchases unexpectedly dropped 0.6 percent, a third consecutive decline, Commerce Department figures showed Thursday in Washington. The median forecast of 86 economists surveyed [...]
If I had to define the recovery period that developed after the trough in the Great Recession, it would have ended sometime in the middle of 2011. Up to that point, there was almost a uniform behavior in financial and even economic accounts (though, on the economic side, there was much left to be desired). It was by no means [...]
The rash of “unexpected” declines in PMI’s this morning in the US, of all places, seems to have abraded at least somewhat the pervasive belief in the American “decoupling.” As I have said before, I afford little validity to PMI’s as anything other than potentially a relative measure of changes, not magnitudes, in shorter-term circumstances. That is why the most [...]
The stock market takes off in holiday celebration of the FOMC being even less clear than it really has been in some time; perhaps going all the way back to Alan Greenspan’s intentional mush. Equity “investors” are happy that the Fed may be happy about the economy, even though there is nothing in actual markets (outside of stocks) to suggest [...]
For all the supposed and assumed disparities between US monetary policy direction and that in Europe, credit markets in both locations seem to be far too much in lock-step agreement. That would suggest a few implications, the first of which is that the global financial system does not really consist of many closed systems with only minor connections as assumed [...]
There is an interesting dichotomy taking shape in credit markets, including those around the globe (that will be a separate post). Some of this, I think, relates to what FOMC member Richard Fisher related today about concerns over asset bubbles. I think the Economic Times of India summed him up the best: Already there are signs of financial excess in [...]
Despite all the fireworks in the treasury market at the end of May, the gripping stasis in inflation trading remained undeterred by the round trip. We have passed into the eleventh consecutive month of such dearth, an absolutely astounding stretch unmatched by anything since TIPS were introduced in 2003. At this point it becomes a race to see how long [...]
By now the bond market is really starting to annoy all the “right” people. The bear flattening that has taken place since operational taper commenced is a direct contradiction to those that implore dismissal of recent GDP (after pleading quite the opposite during the inventory build last year). Mainstream, orthodox economists have settled that Q1 is an aberration, a speed [...]
This is probably unusual in that posts intended as a discussion about the stock market typically feature stock prices or market indices. Rather, I intend to use here only bond market prices and indications and still make interpretations about stock market risk. My colleague Joe Calhoun has pegged stock investors as threading the needle – looking for data that is [...]
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