By Brian Cronin This week sees the 20th anniversary of a traumatic event for the British government. Wednesday, September 16th 1992 was the day that Britain exited the Exchange Rate Mechanism in rather ignominious fashion. It would forever after be known as Black Wednesday. It is also a good lesson for today’s investors in that trying to defend something that [...]
Germany is the key to the euro. The homogenized currency provided them with a labor cost advantage that has been the engine behind the robust export economy (a la China, Japan before 1986, etc). In fact, the original sin of the euro (apart from the very notion of unelected supranational authority) was mispricing the D-mark into the euro schematic. That [...]
From friend of Alhambra, Brian Cronin: Cards on the table: I consider myself a euroskeptic. You may already have gathered that if you’ve read enough of these essays. Having lived in the UK when Britain decided to join itself to the European Union in 1973 and seeing after that the creeping effects of what that meant for ten years before [...]
Guest post from friend of Alhambra, Brian Cronin: I emigrated to the US in 1983 and became an American citizen in 1987. It was the second best thing I ever did though it confounded some of my British friends. There cannot be too many American citizens who can say they voted for Margaret Thatcher but I can certainly lay claim [...]
Guest post from friend of Alhambra, Brian Cronin: REFLECTIONS ON THE EURO AND THE “PROUD” POUND If you asked most Brits what they thought about the euro, their answers would likely be short and pithy, and none too flattering. This rather insular attitude has the faint whiff of disdain. It is new, it is foreign and, well, just not British. [...]
More of the same this week. Markets inching higher on low volume. Crude oil spiking. Tensions in the Middle East. The Bank of Japan trying to do too much. The markets do seem overbought right now, but have been for weeks now. Will this correction ever come? The Nasdaq Composite is holding its trend line. The index is overbought, and [...]
The S&P 500 continues to creep up on no news from Europe and further monetary easing here in the US. While the move up has been nothing to write home about, the markets do find themselves overbought, and sentiment is quite positive, which may signal at least a short term top. The VIX index hit levels not seen since July [...]
This week of trading was once again categorized by low volume and solid technicals. The S&P 500 broke through resistance at the 1290 level and managed to hold the uptrend line, at least temporarily. In the longer-term, the picture is even brighter. The S&P 500 blasted through both the 50-week moving average and its downtrend line. From the looks of [...]
With the US economy showing decent growth while the rest of the world is showing slow or no growth, currency traders are selling Euros and buying Dollars. As a result, the Euro is trading at intermediate term lows while the Dollar is hitting new highs. In recent months, equities and the dollar have gone from a nearly perfect inverse correlation to having practically [...]
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