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Weekly Market Pulse: Much Ado About Not Much

By |2023-04-17T09:06:33-04:00April 17th, 2023|Alhambra Portfolios, Alhambra Research, Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Markets, Real Estate, Stocks|

I sit down every week to write these updates and sometimes it is a struggle to find something - anything - worth writing about. Sure, there's always market "news" so I can find something to fill the page and I hope you find it interesting but the fact is that I don't think any investor - as opposed to trader [...]

Weekly Market Pulse: A Fatal Conceit

By |2023-01-23T10:00:11-05:00January 22nd, 2023|Alhambra Portfolios, Alhambra Research, Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets, Real Estate, Stocks, Taxes/Fiscal Policy|

Inflation* in the US is falling rapidly with the CPI rising just 0.9% in the second half of 2022 versus 5.4% in the first six months. Existing home sales are down 14.6% in the last 3 months and 34% over the last year. Housing starts are down 22% and permits are down 30% year-over-year. Orders for durable goods are down [...]

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: The Real Reason The Fed Should Pause

By |2022-10-10T07:12:05-04:00October 9th, 2022|Alhambra Portfolios, Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets, Real Estate, Stocks|

The Federal Reserve has been on a mission lately to make sure everyone knows they are serious about killing the inflation they created. Over the last two weeks, Federal Reserve officials delivered 37 speeches, all of the speakers competing to see who could be the most hawkish. Interest rates are going up they said, no matter how much it hurts, [...]

Synchronizing Chinese Prices (and consequences)

By |2022-05-12T20:28:47-04:00May 12th, 2022|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

It isn’t just the vast difference between Chinese consumer prices and those in the US or Europe, China’s CPI has been categorically distinct from China’s PPI, too. That distance hints at the real problem which the whole is just now beginning to confront, having been lulled into an inflationary illusion made up from all these things.To start with, yesterday China’s [...]

All The Dead Horses, And All Powell’s Men, Can’t Make Sense of Europe – Again

By |2022-05-05T20:27:17-04:00May 5th, 2022|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

As a preface to this update ostensibly on Europe, it’s all really about Euro$ #5 sadly rounding into form. In this first part, I’m going to have resurrect the quotation marks surrounding the term “rate hikes”, or bring back RHINO (rate hikes in name only) given what’s going on in Treasury bills.Not rate hikes, or enough of them. Our dead [...]

What Really ‘Raises’ The Rising ‘Dollar’

By |2022-05-02T22:25:11-04:00May 2nd, 2022|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

It’s one of those things which everyone just accepts because everyone says it must be true. If the US$ is rising, what else other than the Federal Reserve. In particular, the Fed has to be raising rates in relation to other central banks; interest rate differentials. A relatively more “hawkish” US policy therefore the wind in the sails of a [...]

Weekly Market Pulse: Welcome Back To The Old Normal

By |2022-05-02T20:46:23-04:00May 2nd, 2022|Alhambra Portfolios, Alhambra Research, Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets, Real Estate, Stocks|

Stagflation. It's a word that strikes fear in the hearts of investors, one that evokes memories - for some of us - of bell bottoms, disco, and Jimmy Carter's American malaise. The combination of weak growth and high inflation is the worst of all worlds, one that required a transformational leader and a cigar-chomping central banker to defeat the last [...]

Do I Owe Christine Lagarde An Apology?

By |2022-04-29T17:59:22-04:00April 29th, 2022|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

I may have to rethink my opinion of Christine Lagarde. It just may be that after helming one serious debacle after another, she – unlike most in her position – may have learned a thing or two about being too quick to call it a day. Premature celebrations were the hallmark of central banks throughout the last fifteen years, including, [...]

I’m ‘Officially’ Calling It: Euro$ #5

By |2022-04-22T16:46:23-04:00April 22nd, 2022|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

This must be what the NBER feels like. That group of academic Economists simply took up the job of “declaring” each end of the business cycle. No one seems to have asked them to, nor was there any mandate official or otherwise. Sensing the opportunity, believing the job in keeping with the organization’s competence, or self-assessment of it, the NBER [...]

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