This morning HSBC announced plans to radically downsize its cost structure, mostly through cutting jobs. Most of the attention so far has been on the bank’s plans to use the expected profit boosts to fund a period of rising dividend expansion. Immediately, as a business, there is a bit of a conflict in that attempt as typically expanding dividends and [...]
In some ways, President Obama’s leaked contempt for the “strong dollar” is well-deserved if only due to the mistakes about the semantics of it. Maybe I am being overly pedantic in decrying this taxonomy, but since we live in an economic age of high and burdensome redefinition this is more than just a debate for academic affairs to me. The [...]
There was a reason FDR’s administration in its first 100 days took the order it did. Contrary to some assertions, Executive Order 6102 was not a lawless expansion of executive privilege and prerogative. It had a very lawful basis, underwritten by the Emergency Banking Act of 1933 which itself was based on (and no part of this fact should be [...]
It is exceedingly difficult these days to detect where finance ends and the economy begins. That was intended, of course, as it was believed that greater intrusiveness on the part of the financial ends were consistent with greater, and better, economic control. Certain strains of economics have been obsessed since the dawn of the discipline with finding “optimal” outcomes. More [...]
6-7-15
It was a nasty week for investors with almost no place - or at least no logical place - to hide. Of the 16 broad market ETFs I monitor on a daily basis, only one, was higher on the week - IWM, the Russell 2000 small cap ETF. That's what I mean by no logical place to hide. When the [...]
The S&P 500 Index ((IVV)) zig-zagged with no certain direction for the first part of the year, gaining just under 3% during this somewhat volatile period. The index sits right below support at the 50-day moving average. It must get above the 50-day MA while also breaking through the 2120 level in order to break to new all-time highs. If not, look for the [...]
The perfect payroll report seems to have set off an angry wholesale market. While there was some indication of disorder prior to today, eurodollars in particular were sold once the Establishment Survey made it even more uncomfortable for Yellen’s position. Whereas the eurodollar curve had been unusually stable throughout May, it has been a different story in June. Economy or [...]
It makes a very interesting contrast, to start the week under cloud of suspicion only to end it with its reverse. Economic data was routinely awful earlier, though for the most part financial markets are moved more by how that might make Janet Yellen feel than anything of a fundamental basis for all those prices. Typically, the ISM surveys are [...]
Since Q1 GDP was revised lower by almost 1% that meant estimates of productivity were going to be even more out of alignment than they were at the first release. Of course, in a less massaged environment productivity might have preserved some sense if there was less rigidity from the BLS on the employment side. In other words, when “output” [...]
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