The risk budget this month is unchanged. For the moderate risk investor, the allocation between risk assets and bonds remains at a defensive 40/60 versus the benchmark of 60/40. Credit spreads narrowed on the month but the widening trend is intact and has recently resumed. Valuations are still excessive and 3rd quarter earnings have been generally downbeat. A divergence is [...]
Economic Reports Scorecard – 10/24/15 to 11/6/15 The economic data of the last two weeks stands in fairly sharp contrast to the markets' movements. Markets, particularly bonds and gold, are going all in, betting that this time Yellen & Co. have it right, that growth is really about to accelerate this time. From the end of the last FOMC meeting [...]
St. Louis Fed President James Bullard has become something of a spectacle in the past year or so. As the FOMC claims to be data dependent upon its on schedule for ending ZIRP, Bullard’s interjecting media appearances seem to straddle either side, the exact which he takes being dependent on maybe not data but at least markets. While stocks seem [...]
Most people would look at a 40-month deviation as being rationally altering, maybe even something so permanent. The Fed, on the other hand, along with economists, have convinced themselves that somehow three and a half years is but a temporary detour. And so monetary policy and the recovery outlook itself are supposed to somehow straddle that inconvenience while still emitting [...]
On this side of the “dollar” world, credit markets have all but written Janet Yellen into irrelevance. Despite her pleas (because of?) last week, there isn’t any part of money dealing or fixed income that is taking her “certainty” about recovery and “inflation” as even a partial setting. So lost is the FOMC, that everywhere you turn these markets are [...]
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared last week that Japan is no longer suffering from deflation the day after his own government statistics showed that Japanese prices declined for the first time since QQE began. That is actually great news for the Japanese people, though Abe and Kuroda at the Bank of Japan continually pledge to end the relief. Abe’s [...]
Economic Reports Scorecard – 9/14/15 to 9/25/15 If you want a good explanation for why the Fed didn't hike interest rates last week, just take a look at all the red in that chart. They might have cited international concerns but the reality is that the US economic data isn't all that robust either. Okay, things aren't as bad as [...]
Why was Janet Yellen’s speech yesterday so highly touted? My last post might be more relevant to that appearance than what is presented here. After all, each FOMC meeting begins with a presentation from the head of the Open Market Desk usually pertaining to comprehensive liquidity (or as much as the orthodox view of it allows). For all the smiles [...]
The re-crash of oil prices during the recent “dollar” wave/run were hard on almost everyone involved, economically and otherwise, but perhaps not more so than the ECB and its QE proponents. Despite being attributed with every minor upward move that could plausibly be assigned, for all the hype there has been very little actual movement anywhere of significance. The virtuous [...]
Lost in all the stock market focus is the renewed disaster being signaled across credit markets, “inflation” expectations in particular. Here oil prices and the “dollar’s” darkening intersect with credit and broad financial settings. Quietly, market-based measures of the anticipated future “inflation” path have crashed. Inflation breakevens in TIPS hedging were as low yesterday as the lowest point from January [...]
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