The weekend began with pure joy over PMI’s before it ended in deep disappointment early Monday…over a PMI. It started in China. That country’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) released its November 2019 numbers for manufacturing and non-manufacturing sentiment. According to the government’s calculations, the gauge for manufacturing ticked back above 50 last month for the first time since April. [...]
With some PMI’s in the US on somewhat of an upswing, it already raises the issue of a midpoint in their trend. Given how the US data is pretty isolated in that way, could there also be midpoint decoupling? That’s what we would have to believe if the “bottom is in” folks have it right, those like Jay Powell who [...]
Earlier this month, the Statistics Bureau of Japan had reported an enormous surge in household outlays. For the month of September 2019, the Japanese had splurged on everything from big ticket items to regular discretionary products. Total spending in the month was up 9.5% year-over-year in real terms, an enormous increase which had been the fastest pace ever recorded in [...]
While the world’s attention was fixated on US$ repo for once, the Bank of Japan held a policy meeting and turned in an even more “dovish” performance. Likely the global central bank plan had been to combine the Fed’s second rate cut with what amounted to a simultaneous Japanese pledge for more “stimulus” in October. Both of those followed closely [...]
After trading overnight in Asia, Japan’s government bond market is within a hair’s breadth of setting new record lows. The 10-year JGB is within a basis point and a fraction of one while the 5-year JGB has only 2 bps to reach. It otherwise seems at odds with the mainstream narrative at least where Japan’s economy is concerned. Record lows [...]
In January 2018, Bill Gross was at it again. Famous for being the longtime public face of PIMCO, he’d acquired as much notoriety for being the boy who cried bear. By the way he talked and by what he predicted, you’d have to think the US Treasury had visited some horrible circumstance on a young Bill early in his life. [...]
The British manufacturing sector pulled the English economy into contraction for the first time since 2012. Real GDP declined by 0.2% Q/Q in the second quarter of 2019, another minus sign to add to the growing global list. Goods production fell sharply, down 2.3% in Q2 from Q1. It was the biggest decline since 2009. And it is being blamed [...]
As of today’s close, there are only 22 trading days in the entire history of Japan’s government bonds (JGB) where the yield (or “yield”) on its 10-year paper has been more negative. Those 22 all came clustered together in June and July 2016. In other words, Japan’s bond market is today comparable only to that one period at the utter [...]
There are things to feel optimistic about. I’ve been pegged as a doom and gloomer, and so long as things remain as they are, I don’t see what’s wrong about it. Long term, however, I’m as optimistic as anyone. There’s a gigantic wave of economic growth and prosperity just waiting to be unleashed – the moment the shackles of benign [...]
It’s actually one of the few areas that has been studied in mainstream Economics. The links between global financial upset and broader economic consequences are pretty well understood. Trade gets shut down, therefore economies which are highly dependent upon the exchange of goods experience the effects first. When you see these bellwethers under pressure, it’s a bad sign. The mysterious [...]
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