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QT

I Have Questions

By |2023-07-17T07:43:30-04:00July 16th, 2023|Alhambra Research, Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets, Stocks, Taxes/Fiscal Policy|

I spend a lot of time asking questions. I don't always have answers to these questions but I think it is critical to ask them. Think about how the consensus might be wrong or, more importantly, how you might be. Question the narrative and try to determine what's important and what's not, who you can ignore, and who merits your [...]

Weekly Market Pulse: First, Kill All The Speculators

By |2023-01-30T11:44:01-05:00January 30th, 2023|Alhambra Portfolios, Alhambra Research, Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets, Real Estate, Stocks|

The Fed meets this week and is widely expected to raise the Fed Funds rate by 0.25% to a range of 4.5% - 4.75%. The market has factored in a small probability that they do nothing and leave rates alone, but they'll probably do what's expected because they've spent the last couple of months preparing the markets for exactly this [...]

Peak Policy Error

By |2022-05-27T17:33:38-04:00May 27th, 2022|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Another economic discussion lost to the eventual coronavirus pandemic mania was the 2019 globally synchronized downturn. Not just downturn, outright recession in key parts from around the world, maybe including the US. We’ll simply never know for sure because just when it was happening COVID struck and then governments overrode everything including unfolding history.What anyone can say for sure is [...]

Collateral Shortage…From *A* Fed Perspective

By |2022-05-03T20:32:04-04:00May 3rd, 2022|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

It’s never just one thing or another. Take, for example, collateral scarcity. By itself, it’s already a problem but it may not be enough to bring the whole system to reverse. A good illustration would be 2017. Throughout that whole year, T-bill rates (4-week, in particular) kept indicating this very shortfall, especially the repeated instances when equivalent bill yields would [...]

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 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 [...]

2019: The Year of Repo

By |2020-01-02T19:19:25-05:00January 2nd, 2020|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

The year 2019 should be remembered as the year of repo. In finance, what happened in September was the most memorable occurrence of the last few years. Rate cuts were a strong contender, the first in over a decade, as was overseas turmoil. Both of those, however, stemmed from the same thing behind repo, a reminder that September’s repo rumble [...]

Head Faking In The Empty Zoo: Powell Expands The Balance Sheet (Again)

By |2019-10-08T18:56:47-04:00October 8th, 2019|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

They remain just as confused as Richard Fisher once was. Back in ’13 while QE3 was still relatively young and QE4 (yes, there were four) practically brand new, the former President of the Dallas Fed worried all those bank reserves had amounted to nothing more than a monetary head fake. In 2011, Ben Bernanke had admitted basically the same thing. [...]

Much More Than This Week (TRDKWTAD)

By |2019-09-20T19:02:29-04:00September 20th, 2019|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

According to the recent release of the Federal Reserve’s projected forecasts, that’s it. It wasn’t one and done like Chairman Powell had initially indicated, this “midcycle adjustment” hits two. And that is it, at least if you believe the current calculations spit out by the Fed’s models. It goes along with Powell’s blunt statement he made at the press conference [...]

Stuck at A: Repo Chaos Isn’t Something New, It’s The Same Baseline

By |2019-09-16T18:15:23-04:00September 16th, 2019|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Finally, finally the global bond market stopped going in a straight line. I write often how nothing ever does, but for almost three-quarters of a year the guts of the financial system seemed highly motivated to prove me wrong. Yields plummeted and eurodollar futures prices soared. It is only over the past few weeks that rates have backed up in [...]

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