china

Survey of Salient Risks to Financial Stability

By |2023-10-23T15:09:14-04:00October 23rd, 2023|Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Here is a brief summary of what is of concern to domestic and international policymakers, academics, community groups, and others. We might call these "known risks." Persistent inflation and monetary tightening Persistent or reaccelerating inflationary pressures Resilient economic outlook leading to further monetary policy tightening Volatile market conditions Entrenched expectations of higher inflation leading to higher realized inflation leading to [...]

Weekly Market Pulse: The Dividend Stock Conundrum

By |2023-09-18T08:03:45-04:00September 17th, 2023|Alhambra Portfolios, Alhambra Research, Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Markets, Real Estate, Stocks|

Everybody loves dividend stocks. Some prefer stocks with high dividend yields and some prefer stocks of companies that have grown their dividends consistently, but dividends are an essential component of many (we think it should be all) investors' portfolios. The two methodologies produce quite different portfolios but over the long run, they both perform very well on a total return [...]

Weekly Market Pulse: Where Are The Extremes?

By |2023-09-11T03:54:17-04:00September 10th, 2023|Alhambra Portfolios, Alhambra Research, Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Markets, Real Estate, Stocks|

Every weekend I sit down at my desk and write the title of this post at the top of a legal pad. I make a list of everything I can identify as trading at an extreme in markets. If an investor is to make tactical changes to their portfolio, it is in the extremes where they will find their greatest [...]

Weekly Market Pulse: Currency Illusion

By |2022-11-28T09:49:07-05:00November 28th, 2022|Alhambra Portfolios, Alhambra Research, Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Markets, Real Estate, Stocks|

When we think about the challenges facing an investor today, the big problems, the things we worry about that could cause a lot more harm than some interest rate hikes, are mostly outside the United States. China is prominent this weekend because of demonstrations against their zero-COVID policies. The Chinese people appear to be pretty well fed up with the [...]

Weekly Market Pulse: It’s Always Different This Time

By |2022-11-07T09:29:26-05:00November 6th, 2022|Alhambra Portfolios, Alhambra Research, Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets, Real Estate, Stocks|

The FOMC met last week and did what everyone expected them to do - raised the Fed Funds rate by 0.75%. The bond and stock markets reacted not to this action but to the commentary provided by the committee in its statement and by Chairman Jerome Powell at his post meeting press conference. The former had a new phrase, a [...]

The End of China’s High Tech Aspirations?

By |2022-11-02T10:46:11-04:00November 2nd, 2022|Alhambra Research|

Forget a gradual decoupling from China. In October, the Biden administration announced new export controls and rules that effectively decapitate China’s semiconductor industry. The ramifications go beyond semiconductors to everything touched by them, including potentially ending nearly all of China’s high-tech aspirations. U.S. companies are now banned from exporting advanced chips to China without special exemptions. But the rules go [...]

Weekly Market Pulse: The Dog That Didn’t Bark

By |2022-08-29T08:11:56-04:00August 28th, 2022|Alhambra Portfolios, Alhambra Research, Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets, Real Estate, Stocks|

Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?” Sherlock Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” Gregory: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.” Sherlock Holmes: “That was the curious incident.” From Silver Blaze by Arthur Conan Doyle, 1892 It is hard to determine sometimes what [...]

Wait A Sec, That’s Not Really An *RMB* Liquidity Pool…

By |2022-06-27T20:25:13-04:00June 27th, 2022|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Ben Bernanke once admitted how the job of the post-truth “central banker” is to try to convince the market to do your work for you. What he didn’t say was that this was the only prayer officials had for any success. Because if the market ever decided that talk wasn’t enough, only real money in hand would do, everyone’d be [...]

It’s Starting To Dawn On People There Is No Global Economic Dawn Lit By China

By |2022-06-21T20:04:45-04:00June 21st, 2022|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Xi Jinping’s earlier “stimulus” promises had originally stimulated the Keynesian-addled imaginations of Western observers and Economists. Hearing only that single word, they didn’t appear much interested in any of its details. Like how Emperors facing increasingly grave difficulties historically tend to stimulate their own capacity for remaining Emperor above everything else.For a very brief moment, as Shanghai reopened, there were [...]

Angry April TIC Zeroed In On China’s CNY and Japan’s JPY

By |2022-06-19T00:25:19-04:00June 19th, 2022|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

If the March gasoline/oil spike hit a weak global economy really hard and caused what more and more looks like a recessionary shock, a(n un)healthy part of it was the acceleration of Euro$ #5 concurrently rippling through the global reserve system. This much was apparent right from the start, with financial markets gone haywire three months ago (mid-March seasonal bottleneck), [...]

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