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Weekly Market Pulse: Is The Recession Finally Here?

By |2024-01-22T07:52:03-05:00January 22nd, 2024|Alhambra Portfolios, Alhambra Research, Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Markets, Newsletter, Real Estate, Stocks|

The financial commentariat first started to worry about recession in April of 2022 when the spread between the 10-year Treasury rate and the 2-year Treasury rate turned negative - the yield curve inverted. It subsequently righted itself to positive territory until July of 2022 and has stayed inverted ever since. Since an inverted yield curve has preceded almost every recession [...]

Worry Walls Don’t Explain Repeated Falls

By |2022-04-05T18:02:12-04:00April 5th, 2022|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Someone once said that the stock market is always climbing a wall of worry. Maybe that had been true in some long-ago day, but whether or not it might nowadays is beside the point. The nugget of truth which makes the prosaism memorable is the wall rather than the climber. There’s always something going on somewhere to get worked up [...]

One For New Orders, Several More Against

By |2021-10-01T17:25:42-04:00October 1st, 2021|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

New orders, new orders, new orders. That’s the substance of the inventory cycle. A lot more of them, the upswing in it can remain intact keeping the global manufacturing economy humming along. Should they start to scale back and then, maybe at some point, decline, this unusual supply-constraint trend transitions toward a more historical inventory cycle on the downturn. As [...]

Yes And No Taper To Labor (and inflation)

By |2021-09-01T17:37:08-04:00September 1st, 2021|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

It doesn’t really make much sense, does it? If you stop and think about it for more than a quick second, this notion of a labor shortage doesn’t get past the smell test. The economy overall is, we hear, booming. Really booming. And it’s booming in a way that has the labor market healing far faster than thought not long [...]

Potential Fallout From PMI Wars

By |2021-06-03T20:13:06-04:00June 3rd, 2021|Markets|

It’s not really a war so much as somewhat of a disagreement. And it’s not an unfamiliar one, as time and again these things tend to come down to timing. The global economy remains synchronized, only certain parts of it go ahead first before others then the rest end up joining. Carried into the realm of PMI’s, diverges in sentiment [...]

Some Specifics of ‘Transitory’

By |2021-04-28T17:11:05-04:00April 28th, 2021|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Silver linings have been hard to come by lately, especially last year. Twenty-twenty was a total washout in almost every way imaginable; and that’s an understatement. Still, there were some small signs of genuine progress such as Jay Powell’s thorough contribution to QE debunking. Bank reserves went sky high while practically nothing else did (other than equities), certainly not inflation. [...]

There Have Actually Been Some Jobs Saved, Only In Place of Recovery

By |2020-12-01T19:45:56-05:00December 1st, 2020|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

The ISM reported a small decline in its manufacturing PMI today. The index had moved up to 59.3 for the month of October 2020 in what had been its highest since September 2018. For November, the setback was nearly two points, bringing the headline down to an estimate of 57.5.At that level, it really wasn’t any different from where it [...]

V or L In The Mechanics of PMI’s

By |2020-06-01T18:25:31-04:00June 1st, 2020|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

The thing about PMI’s is they are all second derivative. The focus on fifty is misleading, beginning with the idea that these things can ever be so precise as to clearly delineate the exact moment between contraction and growth. When the indices are high, say like 60 or better, that simply means many more respondents are claiming to see increasing [...]

More Trends That Ended 2019 The Wrong Way

By |2020-01-07T18:28:37-05:00January 7th, 2020|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Auto sales in 2019 ended on a skid. Still, the year as a whole wasn’t nearly as bad as many had feared. Last year got off on the wrong foot in the aftermath of 2018’s landmine, with auto sales like consumer spending down pretty sharply to begin it. Spending did rebound in mid-year if only somewhat, enough, though, to add [...]

Manufacturing Clears Up Bond Yields

By |2020-01-03T12:28:06-05:00January 3rd, 2020|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Yesterday, IHS Markit reported that the manufacturing turnaround its data has been suggesting stalled. After its flash manufacturing PMI had fallen below 50 several times during last summer (only to be revised to slightly above 50 every time the complete survey results were tabulated), beginning in September 2019 the index staged a rebound jumping first to 51.1 in that month. [...]

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