The old cliché is that everything of significance in life is a marathon rather than a sprint. In Japan, such sentiment strains all reason as there is no way that any marathon, economic or otherwise, could possibly be expected to last more twenty-five years. But here it is in 2015, thirty years after the Plaza Accord and BoJ’s first massive [...]
The benchmark revisions (trend-cycle) to durable goods left us with a smaller estimated economy but that wasn’t supposed to be a problem because all that matters supposedly is what comes next. In other words, the cycle was already deficient so the scale of that deficiency was not meant to suggest anything about the next phase, according to economic projections. If [...]
7-26-15
The last year has been a tough one for investors. There are a few places one could have booked a double digit gain in the last 12 months but not many and certainly not in assets that are in the standard portfolio. Currency hedged ETFs for European and Japanese stocks produced big gains but a lot of the gain was [...]
Tail risks have eased following the end to the current Greek crisis. The world now looks to move toward economic normalization. Bonds performed well during the flight to safety coinciding with the referendum and emergency meeting circuit in Europe during the first half of this month. Now that investors are collectively exhaling and eyes move toward the timing of the signaled, Fed [...]
The S&P 500 Index ((IVV)) zig-zagged with no certain direction for the first part of the year, gaining just over 2% during this somewhat volatile period. After the past week's action, the index sits below support at the 50-day moving average and is certain to retest the 200-day MA at the 2070 level. We might finally be in the midst of the long-talked about [...]
The minimum wage is not what is commonly referred, as is being proven again as parts of the US experiment directly with this boundary. In New York, fast food workers have been given a $15 per hour minimum wage which is being celebrated by the same fast food workers who will bear the brunt of the experimentation. Some of them [...]
The concept of a head-fake in stock investing is pretty well-established and well-known but it may have to be extended to economics. Every small increase in positive numbers for major statistics is extrapolated into grandiose projections for the final recovery that “everyone” knows has to be coming. Yet, each and every time those expectations are delivered, and swallowed without question [...]
With almost everything turning lower this week under “dollar” pressure, it is imperative to keep in mind the apex asset class. In 2007, it was the ABX indices and various mortgage related structures that signified the how far along everything was; in this cycle it is clearly corporate credit. The disarray starts in the riskiest pieces and then moves inward [...]
There are numerous problems created by asset bubbles and many more as a result of a series of them. The financial system becomes highly destabilized, especially as authorities and policymaking bodies misunderstand them to the point of determined stasis rather than courting necessary evolution and reform, which in turn has the same effect on the economy. This is not a [...]
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