When Japan’s Ministry of Trade, Economy, and Industry (METI) reported earlier in November that Japanese Industrial Production (IP) had plunged again during the month of September 2021, it was so easy to just dismiss the decline as a product of delta COVID. According to these figures, industrial output fell an unsightly 5.4%...from August 2021, meaning month-over-month not year-over-year. Altogether, IP [...]
Where is the “tantrum?” If there is one, to this point it has been historically minor changes limited to the shorter end of the yield curve between the 2-year and 5-year USTs. This section of it is more influenced by what the market believes Jay Powell’s Fed will do especially now that it likely will be Jay Powell’s Fed for [...]
I do long for the day when no one cares even a tiny bit about something like this. Sadly, that day remains our very distant future because nothing has changed. This, rather than anything useful, is what everyone means when they use the word “stability” to describe these situations.For months, there had been rumors Jay Powell would be one-and-done like [...]
Alhambra CEO Joe Calhoun discusses the hazards of financial news, over-speculation in the market, the prudent person investment rule & reports on retail sales, industrial production, and the housing market index.
Look around the poker table. If you can't see the sucker, you're it. Warren Buffett I actually don't know if Warren Buffett was the first to say that and I'm not sure that's exactly the right phrasing. When I sat down to write this I thought it was from Amarillo Slim, a professional gambler from Arkansas. Or maybe that other [...]
157.3 Will the Next Fed Chair be a Theoretical Grammarist?———Ep 157.3 Summary———The last time the Federal Reserve tapered its QE program the central bank spent HOURS and HOURS and HOURS and HOURS on determining which adjective to us. Adverbs. Dangling participles, onomatopoeia, clauses, subject and object. What was NOT discussed? Money. Credit. Collateral. ———Sponsor——— Macropiece Theater with Emil Kalinowski (a/k/a [...]
At first, it was taken as a sign of relief, of strength and the return of good fortune. So many massive ships each overloaded with containers stacked skyward above their beams were headed to the West Coast, the ports there couldn’t handle the traffic. The boats, and the massive cargoes they carried, themselves packed into a sort of wondrously fascinating [...]
157.2 The US Treasury Bond Market "Landmine" is Primed———Ep 157.2 Summary———The "landmine" has been part of each of the four global/regional dollar squeezes of the past 14 years (2007-09, 2011-12, 2014-16, 2018-20). The "landmine" is when US Treasury Bond yields decline precipitously and signal that economic potential has been seriously maimed. Where are we in 2021? ———Sponsor——— Macropiece Theater with [...]
The bond market’s verdict has already been rendered. In fact, the judgment was made even before this year’s CPIs surged to the highest they’d been in a long time. The most consistently accurate and only historically validated source for sorting and signaling inflation, low yields aren’t just skeptical in being low they are unequivocal in remaining steadfastly ultra-low.For those who [...]
The TIC data is great, it’s fantastic and wonderful if by comparison to the utterly slim pickings available elsewhere – which is practically nil. Compared to what I’d really like to know, the series leaves a ton out there. This is understandable if still unforgivable; on the one hand, the Treasury International Capital report itself predates the eurodollar system by [...]
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