It was, apparently, just a one-day “dollar” reprieve for the crude complex as oil prices are pounded today across the board even after the FOMC statement (leak) release. Unsurprisingly, copper joined the depression as the September futures price traded as low as $2.2605 this morning ($2.273 as of this writing). That is, of course, a new cycle low in copper [...]
Let’s start by stipulating that the ECB’s operations are far more complex. This is the case both in terms of actual operations but also in trying to figure out what goes where and why. That is at the start unsurprising given the European monetary framework; even though the euro as a denomination is continental there are still national fissures in [...]
To start this week, Ma Jun, chief economist for the PBOC, gave an email interview where he expressed his belief that the yuan will be more volatile but in either direction. Many still took those comments as if it were a veiled prescription toward devaluation. In the near term, it is more likely there will be "two way volatility," or [...]
Looking back now, January was such a weird month. You had, on the one hand, the barely restrained giddiness of the mainstream media proclaiming ultimate success of 5% GDP and an Establishment Survey (and dutiful unemployment rate) that could do nothing wrong. To this view, the economy was a certainty. Yet, on the other hand, markets around the world were [...]
The Japanese economy sank yet again, more than suggesting there is no recovery from the “inflation”-led recession that began six months before any tax change. Almost right from the start of QQE, Q4 2013, Japan’s GDP has either been contracting or barely rising. The net result is the monetary hole left behind by so many flawed theories. Primary among them, [...]
The S&P/LSTA Leveraged Loan 100 was updated this weekend through August 13, confirming that market values in those “liquid” names fell below the December 16 levels for the worst prices since before QE3. There isn’t any further information on the reasons for the delay, though revisions to the BofAML High Yield indices suggest an answer. On Friday, the CCC and [...]
Last week, industrial production ticked higher but only somewhat while this week the Empire Fed manufacturing survey has caused extensive jitters to extend at least another week. Given those somewhat contrasting views on American industry they can be reconciled by simple timing matched against what the “dollar” has been doing across that period. Oil prices, that vital connection between “dollar” [...]
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 now finds itself in a wedge pattern that will resolve itself only with a big move in one direction or another. If it's to the downside, we might finally be in the midst of [...]
China apparently shocked some people last week by allowing the Yuan to fall 3.5% against the dollar. I don't know why in the world they would be shocked since we've known for months - heck almost a year now - that capital has been leaving China. I wrote about it back in March so it isn't like it was exactly a [...]
Are we going to get the 10-20% pull back in stocks that, it seems, everyone in the investing world is calling for? Given the anxiety and market volatility surrounding the Chinese currency devaluation, one might have thought again that this was the week for the long awaited correction. Well, SPY closed at 207.95 on 8/7 and 209.42 on 8/14 a [...]
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