China’s economy is sliding and nobody can really tell where that downturn will end (though it doesn’t stop the media from proclaiming a bottom at each individual upward variation). Brazil’s economy is in the worst shape in decades, with both volume problems coinciding with the real’s sharp devaluation hammering consumer prices. The country’s central bank has managed to make it [...]
The simple narrative about QE is drawn from what is believed a simple process. The central bank buys bonds and by doing so it is simply assumed to be an “extra” bid on bond prices; therefore interest rates fall in whatever issue is being targeted by QE. Even in the US, QE has had trouble with that simple relationship. Instead [...]
The Greek government, EU, IMF and ECB agreed to new terms for a third bailout. As I see it, there are two very important items for markets today. The Greek government will be selling assets to pay down debt and re-capitalize the banking sector. Creditors essentially accessed the Greek collateral they were seeking. In return, the European Commission will provide Euro [...]
Having now passed the anniversary of the “rising dollar”, it is interesting to see the related and continued effects on the stock bubble(s). As should be obvious by now, stock buybacks, funded via corporate bonds and loosely categorized C&I loans, are responsible for the post-QE3 nearly uninterrupted rise. Repurchases are forming a separate “liquidity” conduit, indirect leverage if you will, [...]
There was a point last week - probably about midday Wednesday - when it seemed that the financial world was spinning out of control. China's Shanghai exchange was continuing its slow motion crash, down almost 6% overnight, Europe was getting hammered as Greece teetered, the NYSE suddenly stopped working, United/Continental Airlines was grounded due to computer glitches, the Wall Street [...]
In April 2008, Nassim Taleb was becoming a household name criticizing the quant dominance in finance. Bear Stearns had just failed and the entire edifice of mathematical order was still breaking down, as the last bastions of credit default swap “supply”, the monoline insurers, were still rumored to be heading for insolvency (while the nightly news focused on whether that [...]
The analysts streaming across my screen last week all had the same opinion - Greece will vote yes, accept Europe's terms and stay in the Euro. Well, as I write this, the early polls prove, if nothing else, that one should beware of experts bearing consensus opinions. According to the headlines at all the major newspapers the Greeks have voted [...]
Greece really should not matter, at all, outside of the tragic plight of the Greeks themselves. You’ll see that message echoed particularly inside the US where the status quo takes a contradictory turn toward reasonableness in order to justify further what isn’t. This is all about asset prices and how they have been so skewed almost everywhere that when one [...]
Just a few weeks ago the Swedish central bank, Riksbank, was being lauded for its courage and action in finally embracing QE as the ECB had done. The deflation problem in Sweden had been, so it is asserted, seemingly intractable and thus forcing the monetary hand once more. Riksbank has never been shy about fine-tuning here and there, so it [...]
Here is a simple conditional probability table one might use to gauge the potential risks and rewards stemming from the Greek credit negotiations. The table considers 3 paths which may arise from ongoing talks. It assigns a probability for each and what an investor might expect for market returns under each scenario. Given recent events, the probabilities in the table have [...]
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