oil prices

Weekly Market Pulse: An Economic Overview

By |2024-03-18T07:43:45-04:00March 17th, 2024|Alhambra Portfolios, Alhambra Research, Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets, Newsletter, Real Estate, Stocks|

Over the last two years, the evolution of the US economy has been driven by a return to “normal”. The distortions of the response to COVID had a profound impact on the economy that I believe will persist for many years. The change in cash levels at the household level were large and have proved more persistent than most expected. [...]

Weekly Market Pulse: Questions

By |2024-02-20T08:46:05-05:00February 20th, 2024|Alhambra Portfolios, Alhambra Research, Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Markets, Real Estate, Stocks|

Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't [...]

I Told You It *Wasn’t* Money Printing; How The Fed Helped Cause, But Can’t Solve, Our Current ‘Inflation’

By |2022-04-19T17:38:29-04:00April 19th, 2022|Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Trust the Fed. Ha! It’s one thing for money dealers to look upon Jay Powell’s stash of bank reserves with remarkable disdain, more immediately damning when effects of the same liquidity premiums in the real economy create serious frictions leaving the entire world exposed to the consequences. When all is said and done, the Federal Reserve has created its own [...]

Hard Data And Hard Truths Outside the Laundromat

By |2022-03-25T20:32:59-04:00March 25th, 2022|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Was this taking it a little too far, a little too obvious? Central bankers, since they aren’t real central bankers, their entire job is to project confidence. We get that. No matter what happens along the way, you can be sure policymakers aren’t going to ever let on in public they’re concerned. Think the famous scene in the Naked Gun [...]

Not Born Yesterday

By |2022-03-17T20:35:45-04:00March 17th, 2022|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

When even Bloomberg can’t help but notice, not just notice but then write about it, that’s significant. Normally a staunch water carrier for the official Federal Reserve position, these curves getting bent so far out of what would be better shapes aren’t so easy to just dismiss and ignore any longer. Jay Powell says household and business finances are holding [...]

Consumers And Markets Both Agree, It’s Not Consumer Price Inflation

By |2022-03-11T19:36:23-05:00March 11th, 2022|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

What do American consumers know that Jay Powell and the FOMC apparently don’t? Certainly, those voting policymakers at the Federal Reserve are going to start raising their policy rates for political reasons under pressure from politicians facing deeper and deeper economic scrutiny for every dollar higher in crude oil. The Fed, however, can’t extract any additional supplies of black gold [...]

Odd Curve Shapes, or More Chinese Than Russian

By |2022-03-09T19:55:39-05:00March 9th, 2022|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

This is a truly weird shape for the US Treasury curve to find for itself. Really steep up front, seriously upward sloping consistent with the Fed’s stated rate hike intentions (which influence short-term rates most directly up to around the 2-year note). From there on down, though, it’s flat. As in pancake, almost. I can’t recall a time when the [...]

Weekly Market Pulse: Oil Shock

By |2022-03-07T07:38:30-05:00March 6th, 2022|Alhambra Portfolios, Alhambra Research, Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Markets, Real Estate, Stocks|

Crude oil prices rose over 25% last week and as I sit down to write this evening, the overnight futures are up another 8% to around $125. Almost every other commodity on the planet rose in prices last week too, as did the dollar. Those two factors - rising dollar and rising commodity prices - mean the likelihood of recession [...]

Houston, We Have An Oil (and inventory) Problem

By |2022-03-04T20:21:14-05:00March 4th, 2022|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

If only, like in the aftermath of the Apollo 13 explosion, we could just radio Houston to get started in figuring out just the way out of our fix. Mission Control would certainly buzz all the right people with the right stuff, summoning the best engineers and scientists from their quiet divans to the frenzied and dangerous work ahead. Sadly, [...]

Bitcoin Like(s) TIPS

By |2022-01-25T20:16:54-05:00January 25th, 2022|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Oil has easily, it appears, rebounded after having moved lower in November. It bottomed out that first big day of omicron fear on December 1 (ironically, or not, the same day the eurodollar futures curve inverted). Since a low of just over $65 (WTI), crude’s front futures price is easily back in the $80s thereby threatening to make January’s US [...]

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