She's been a bad girl. She's like a chemical. Though you try to stop it, she's like a narcotic. You wanna torture her. You wanna talk to her. All the things you bought for her, putting up your temp'rature. Pump it up until you can feel it. Pump it up when you don't really need it. Elvis Costello [...]
Even before the Brexit vote, momentum was shifting to defensive sectors. The rally in weak dollar sectors - other than the gold/silver mining industry - was looking very overbought and tired anyway, so Brexit was a good excuse to take some profits. Whether the dollar can retain the strength it has gained on this historic vote is the big question. [...]
In June 2015, Pew Research Center conducted a poll of citizens in European countries in order to gauge public sentiment of the European integration project. They found what they thought was a rebound in favorability. The survey conducted in 2013 appeared then to have been the low point, with the 2014 update finding an uptick in support. By last year, [...]
The real nature of liquidity is not what you see today but what we might find when the going gets tough. Though it is an intangible concept (not that that hasn’t kept economists from trying to quantify it), we can reasonably assume that if overall liquidity today appears impaired under relatively benign conditions, it will be significantly worse as malignancy [...]
Economic Reports Scorecard While everyone was focused on the potentially negative impact of Brexit, the Census Bureau was reporting evidence of actual economic weakness in the form of the durable goods report. The report was weak pretty much across the board but the weakness in autos is particularly concerning. The auto industry, along with construction, has been a leader in [...]
A pretty wild day for the markets today after the UK voted to leave the European Union. Well, actually, it was just a referendum and non-binding but ignoring the will of the voters is not a good way to keep hold of the levers of power. So it probably does mean the UK will leave the EU. It certainly means [...]
It was a nice diversion while it lasted, I suppose. From the moment of the unfortunate murder of the British MP, funding markets, in particular, had been furiously “selling dollars” to get back some of the pound that was falling as Brexit had gained momentum. Media commentary talks about it as if that were the whole topic – it never [...]
With the sudden interjection of uncertainty halting the surge in Brexit odds since the unfortunate attack on British MP Jo Cox last week, the financial world has benefitted from the pound’s resurrection. Sterling has had a very good couple of days in this reversal, especially today. As it rises it adds the same as we saw on the day of [...]
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