Weekly Market Pulse (VIDEO)
Alhambra CEO Joe Calhoun discusses the impact of the Ukraine/Russia situation on oil, recession, European stock markets, and Alhambra portfolios.
Weekly Market Pulse: Oil Shock
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
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, [...]
The Rate Hikers Are Not Serious People
Though I say, write, and communicate all the time how the Federal Reserve is not a central bank because it doesn’t do money and that therefore its non-money monetary policies are little more than pop psychology conveyed via an increasingly stale puppet show, you might be surprised to learn that none other than Janet Yellen has publicly agreed with my [...]
BLS: We’ll Smooth The Payroll Data; ADP: Hold My Beer
Remember the summer slowdown? Not last year’s, the first one. Back around July and August 2020 when what was supposed to have been a V-shaped recovery fell way off that trend. Instead, blamed on something with COVID, the US (and global economy) limped its way toward the end of that year just in time for its sugar-rush restart via helicopter.Twenty-twenty’s [...]
Last Year Wasn’t The Year of Inflation, It Consistently Set Up This Year For Inflationary Fail
The most common explanation for UST repo fails is that short sellers become an imbalance in the market for Treasuries. Convinced (isn’t everyone?) interest rates have nowhere to go but up and these instruments are doomed, therefore ripe to profit from the destruction, short selling sharks supposedly swoop in. Since they’ve borrowed UST’s they don’t own, the herd is susceptible [...]
SWIFT Isn’t The ‘Nuclear Option’ For Russia, Because The World Is Eurodollar Not Dollar
As everyone “knows”, the US dollar is the world’s reserve currency which can only leave the US government in control of it. Participation is both required and at the pleasure of American authorities. If you don’t accept their terms, you risk the death penalty: exile from the privilege of the US dollar’s essential business.From what little most people know about [...]
Weekly Market Pulse: Well, That Was A Surprise
Last week when I wrote this weekly piece, the S&P 500 futures were down 80 points as Russia appeared poised to attack Ukraine, which they ultimately did last week. Today I sit here to write again and the futures are once again down, this time around 100 points. What's interesting is that the level this evening is well above last [...]
A Speculative Story: Treasuries in Belgium, Russians in Ukraine, and Derecognized NFC Loans Changing Across Europe (but mainly Belgium)
Have European banks begun to lend in a way that will lead to actual inflation? For Europe’s central bankers, this is a huge question. For so many years despite almost constant QE, banks have consistently refused to do so. Even with supercharged asset purchases begun in 2020, there still hasn’t been any correlation between ECB activities and bank lending.This is [...]
What Does She Mean, Worse?
At issue is what she or they mean when the use the qualifier “worse.” It may be that how policymakers are thinking about it ends up being very different from reality or bond market discounting. No surprise, these two camps have frequently been at odds and for a very long time; Alan Greenspan’s “conundrum” a full seventeen years ago this [...]
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