The entire point of leveraged positions is the margin of safety. That is true on both sides of that equation, as for the provider and the borrower/user. In the most famous examples of collapse, from AIG to LTCM losses were never really the issue. None of them could withstand instead collateral calls to their liquidity reserves. As noted last week, [...]
The link between stock prices and oil has been especially high of late, and that has left quite a few traders and experts stumped. For a good long while any impact from oil was denied as only “transitory” or even helpful to consumers through some sort of “tax cut” effect. In January 2016, however, liquidations appeared regularly in one alongside [...]
Monetarism, at its core, is relatively quite simple. It would have to be, standing upon ground of nothing much more than generic concepts for almost every important economic factor. But all of it can be distilled into the idea of money supply; given “enough”, the economy will thrive. That view includes some of the worst of conditions so long as [...]
Very much in-line with the stubborn and creative effort to convince you that the economy has healed, policymakers have taken to the notion of “resiliency” as they seek to exit the QE business once again. Janet Yellen seems to work that adjective into every speech she gives, as if the power of her voice were enough to simply make it [...]
It is hard to believe that this past weekend marked the seventh anniversary of the paradigm shift in global financial function. Everything that has occurred in the years since can be traced to those days in August 2007 when money markets broke down for the first time. Even the current, though measured, move away from the US dollar in global [...]
What happens at the quarterly window dressing periods for the domestic banking system (which includes foreign subsidiaries chartered for US business) is essentially a gaming of the leverage ratios. As with everything inside the Basel paradigm, banks make themselves look less risky for their reporting periods. In terms of funding markets, that means massaging short-term liabilities, particularly repo. To do [...]
More of the same from Janet Yellen in her latest speech, but her focus on “resilience” caught my attention as it relates to very recent developments. The taper threat experience last year may have been a warning, but it doesn’t seem like it resonated with her or policymakers. The major bond selloff, which led to global ripples of crisis in [...]
The occasion of this year has lent itself to what I sense is more and more the drive to set down “history” before a full review can coalesce interpretations that might not be kind. I’m talking about Ben Bernanke now “speaking his mind” and the cast of 2008 writing books to tell their side. It is highly natural of any [...]
I suppose when your entire task derives from regression-based statistics, there is the tendency to incorporate straight lines into even your own thought patterns. Of course, that leads to self-reinforcing bias and should be canceled by some governing process. Usually that governing process takes the form of applied knowledge (as opposed to math-based knowledge) and plain common sense. In a [...]
It is somewhat of a fair criticism that playing armchair quarterback years after events unfolded amounts to lazy or devalued analysis. Picking apart assessments with the full benefit of hindsight is seemingly unfair to the participants and targets of any reproach. It also may appear to be irrelevant to spend so much time when current events demand more attention and [...]
Stay In Touch