February was a very interesting month, wasn’t it? There was the pause or even end of the inflation hysteria driven home by “unexpected” liquidations in markets all over the world. On top of those, LIBOR-OIS blew out and all the absurd explanations put forth for it, and even outright lies. Needless to say (write), I’ve been waiting for the TIC [...]
There is no change to the risk budget this month. For the moderate risk investor, the allocation to bonds is 50%, risk assets 45% and cash 5%. Stocks continued their erratic ways since the last update with another test of the February lows that are holding - for now. While we believe growth expectations are moderating somewhat (see the Bi-Weekly Economic [...]
Japanese industrial production dropped sharply in January 2018, Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry reported last month. Seasonally-adjusted, the IP index fell 6.8% month-over-month from December 2017. Since the country has very little mining sector to speak of, and Japan’s IP doesn’t include utility output, this was entirely manufacturing in nature (99.79% of the IP index is derived from [...]
Friday, January 26, stocks hit their last record highs. Buoyed by supposedly strong earnings along with near euphoria about tax reform anecdotes, all three major US indices were sitting at their respective tops after another big week. Everything was apparently going in the right direction: All the three key U.S. indexes closed at record levels on Friday following better-than-expected earnings [...]
There is no change to the risk budget this month. For the moderate risk investor the allocation to bonds is 50%, risk assets 45% and cash 5%. We have had continued volatility since the last update but the market action so far is pretty mundane. The initial selloff halted at the 200 day moving average and the rebound carried to [...]
On October 31, 1997, the IMF announced a rescue for Indonesia. Though it was Thailand who caught the Asian flu first, it was this latter country where a monetary line in the sand was drawn. Nobody wanted to find out what a complete wipeout of the Indonesia rupiah might mean for financial conditions across Asia. Included in that category of [...]
The narrative for global growth, synchronized or not, doesn’t do well with JPY on the rise. Referred to as a safe haven, there should be no reason for an exchange value at a level not seen since late 2016. It flies in the face of the falling dollar, though in the case of yen, backwards as is usual, this particular [...]
Last week, Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda unleashed a mini-controversy with remarks he now claims were taken somewhat out of context. On March 2, speaking before Japan’s parliament, the central banker sure sounded quite confident: Right now, the members of the policy board and I think that prices will move to reach 2 percent in around fiscal 2019. So [...]
According to the US Treasury Department’s Treasury International Capital (TIC) report, foreign private holders of UST’s had been selling them steadily in the last quarter of last year. Estimates including those just released for December 2017 show a total net reduction of $24 billion. While that’s not a huge number, private overseas interests typically buy more than they sell in [...]
This is the Year of the Dog, or it will be starting tomorrow across Asia. Tonight marks the opening of celebrations for China’s Spring Festival Golden Week. These weeklong breaks in Chinese contributions to the global system have over the past few years rarely been so uneventful. Their absence has been noted both good and bad; the very worst of [...]
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