Gold is the ultimate hedge, but it is far from perfect. Unlike, say, sovereign bonds there should be no expectation for a negatively correlated price. You can buy a UST or German bund even at negative yields and at least expect the price to rise when things are at their worst. Flight to safety or flight to liquidity. You can’t [...]
Earlier this year, Chinese authorities reduced the VAT tax the government charges auto manufacturers. Intended to boost consumption, the levy was reduced from 16% to 13% in the hope automakers would pass along the savings to consumers. Many if not most manufacturers did. The results were immediate, and fleeting. In the month of March 2019, total car sales fell “only” [...]
Our very own Joe Calhoun, founder and CEO of Alhambra Investments, was invited to feature on Hedgeye's 20th episode of In the Arena. He joins Hedgeye's Daryl Jones in a lively discussion on the current investing landscape and hurdles facing the U.S. economy:
The Chicago Fed’s National Activity Index (NAI) fell to -0.36 in July. That’s down from a +0.10 in June. By itself, the change from positive to negative tells us very little, as does the absolute level below zero. What’s interesting to note about this one measure is the average but more so its rate of change. The index itself is [...]
After trading overnight in Asia, Japan’s government bond market is within a hair’s breadth of setting new record lows. The 10-year JGB is within a basis point and a fraction of one while the 5-year JGB has only 2 bps to reach. It otherwise seems at odds with the mainstream narrative at least where Japan’s economy is concerned. Record lows [...]
In January 2018, Bill Gross was at it again. Famous for being the longtime public face of PIMCO, he’d acquired as much notoriety for being the boy who cried bear. By the way he talked and by what he predicted, you’d have to think the US Treasury had visited some horrible circumstance on a young Bill early in his life. [...]
Curiously short on star power, the Jackson Hole gathering this year has already taken an odd turn. It’s been practically subversive. Usually when the Kansas City Fed gets together for these things each and every August, the main attraction is the top central bankers in the major economies. Outside of the Bank of England’s Mark Carney, this year there’s only [...]
It’s becoming fashionable again to dismiss manufacturing. In 2015, we heard repeatedly how it represented only 12% of overall economic output. Any minor problems affecting such a small slice would surely be nothing much for the other seven-eights of the economy to overcome. There was no way Yellen’s rate hikes and the booming recovery they would anticipate would be derailed [...]
The entire basis for what the Fed is now calling a “mid-cycle” adjustment rests upon a specific view of the labor market. There was weakness in consumer spending, there remains weakness in business investment, but none of these cross currents or headwinds are going to matter. Americans are experiencing robust employment conditions which when these reassert themselves will cycle the [...]
For a cabal of superpatient supergeniuses, the Chinese tend to play with fire quite often. According to many, the Communists have perfected the art of technocracy and are merely waiting out the impetuously free West. The dollar system will destroy itself (there’s the kernel of truth) allowing a perfectly positioned China to swoop in and rescue the global economy with [...]
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