The celebration was premature. As usual, people were extrapolating reflation into recovery. Getting relatively better after being really bad is not the same as truly healing. Reflation is a necessary but by itself insufficient condition for normalcy. The latter requires the former as a first step and then needs enough momentum (of opportunity) to carry it through only then completing [...]
Understand what the word “transitory” truly means in this context. It is no different than Ben Bernanke saying, essentially, subprime is contained. To the Fed Chairman in early 2007, this one little corner of the mortgage market in an otherwise booming economy was a transitory blip that booming economy would easily withstand. Just eight days before Bernanke would testify confidently [...]
The risk budget is again unchanged this month. For the moderate risk investor, the allocation between bonds and risk assets is 50/50. Why is the stock market falling? Is it fear of a trade related slowdown? Or of an overly aggressive Fed hiking rates too far and killing one of the longest US expansions on record? Or is it more [...]
The news was one of those instances when you could see they were trying a little too hard. It didn’t make any sense, not anyway in the context to which it was delivered. On September 21, unnamed German officials were supposedly championing a megamerger in the banking sector. The country’s two largest financial institutions might be brought together to save [...]
By the time Shinzo Abe had been elected, he already had the wind at his back. At least it could have been described that way by Economists. While Abe was given a second chance at being Japan’s Prime Minister in the middle of December 2012, his government found the yen and stock market moving in his direction. These are called [...]
The risk budget is unchanged again this month. For the moderate risk investor, the allocation between bonds and risk assets is evenly split. The only change to the portfolio is the one I wrote about last week, an exchange of TIP for SHY. Interest rates are on the rise again, the 10-year Treasury yield punching through 3% again this morning. [...]
When it comes to the stock market and the corporate cash flow condition, our attention is usually drawn to stock repurchases. With good reason. These controversial uses of scarce internal funds are traditionally argued along the lines of management teams identifying and correcting undervalued shares. History shows, conclusively, that hasn’t really been true. Last year’s tax reform law was meant [...]
The risk budget is unchanged this month. For the moderate risk investor the allocation to bonds and risk assets is evenly split. There are changes this month within the asset classes. How far are we from the end of this cycle? When will the next recession arrive and more importantly when will stocks and other markets start to anticipate a [...]
The world is full of anomalies. It may seem like a paradox, but financial markets are particularly eventful places. Something happens, some people notice, and most often it goes…nowhere. It’s all the time and a constant part of analysis, trying to identify and separate what is truly contained. The global eurodollar monetary system grew so far and so fast in [...]
It’s worth revisiting the topic of the “rising dollar.” What determines its exchange value in the first place? Orthodox convention associates the general direction up or down with interest rate differentials, the infamous global carry trade. Not just any interest rate comps, either, but those of short-term money markets. Thus, if the Federal Reserve is “raising rates” as it has [...]
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