Ben Bernanke once admitted how the job of the post-truth “central banker” is to try to convince the market to do your work for you. What he didn’t say was that this was the only prayer officials had for any success. Because if the market ever decided that talk wasn’t enough, only real money in hand would do, everyone’d be [...]
Late last year I wrote a weekly update that focused on the speculative nature of the markets. In that article, I focused on the S&P 500 because I wanted to make a point, namely that owning the S&P 500 did not absolve investment advisers of their fiduciary duty. If you intentionally make the S&P 500 - or any other index [...]
It’s not recession fears, those are in the past. For much if not most (vast majority) of mainstream pundits and newsmedia alike, unlike regular folks this is all news to them (the irony, huh?) Economists and central bankers everywhere had said last year was a boom, a true inflationary inferno raging worldwide. For once, CPIs (or European HICPs) seemed to [...]
It’s an ominous though hardly surprising development. This has been shocking for those involved. Many if not most shipping companies had convinced themselves that once Shanghai and China’s vast harbor facilities were opened back up there’d be at least a mini-boom, a surge in activity for the world (America) to make up for lost time. Container rates were widely anticipated [...]
It’s not just the 4-week T-bill rate which is defying the Fed’s illusion of control, though that’s where the incidents are most evident. The front bill is nowhere close to the official RRP “floor” which can only mean one thing: collateral shortage, a large and persistent liquidity premium. Therefore, the further under said floor, the more the competition for the [...]
Xi Jinping’s earlier “stimulus” promises had originally stimulated the Keynesian-addled imaginations of Western observers and Economists. Hearing only that single word, they didn’t appear much interested in any of its details. Like how Emperors facing increasingly grave difficulties historically tend to stimulate their own capacity for remaining Emperor above everything else.For a very brief moment, as Shanghai reopened, there were [...]
The only thing that changed was the CPI. What distinguishes 2021-22 from the prior post-crisis period 2007-20 is merely the performance of whatever consumer price index. This latter has been called inflation, yet the data conclusively support the market verdict pricing how it never was.What data? The "everything" data, the most comprehensive financial and monetary compendium yet available: The Financial [...]
Alhambra CEO Joe Calhoun gives his Mid-Year 2022 update on the financial markets; what's happened, surprises, and anomalies.
Over the weekend, Bitcoin tumbled again. Reaching an ultra-ugly low of $17,641 (before retracing back above $20k), even the self-styled premier digital “store of value” has thrown in the towel. As I wrote last week, winter isn’t coming it is here.One crucial reason why, the Japan’s Ministry of Finance reported last week how imports into that country during the tumultuous [...]
Note: This update is longer than usual but I felt a comprehensive review was necessary. The Federal Reserve panicked last week and spooked investors into the worst week for stocks since the onset of COVID in March 2020. The S&P 500 is now firmly in bear market territory but that is a fraction of the pain in stocks and other [...]
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