When the Fed is revered as it is in certain circles, its superstitions afford unwavering faith and even straight up desire. It is much, much easier and comforting to believe in a benevolent guiding spirit, an all-powerful force of good that removes all the nightmares. The cultivation of that ideal started in the 1980’s but reached its apex in the [...]
The US economy is supposed to be nothing like its Chinese counterpart, a sentiment that extends in the mainstream well past that into genuine surprise about how it would be possible US financial markets tripping over Chinese stumbles. Though the US might be fighting, too, a manufacturing slump that looks more like recession every day, convention still holds that the [...]
When analyzing the full and true nature of the dissonance between the idea of continued recovery and the financial markets’ scenario for something much worse you realize that this is not a new occurrence. In curve after curve, negativity has been building for years. Financial curves are important because they tell us the health of the monetary economy, namely assumptions [...]
The PBOC wasted no time this week showing that it was serious about its desperation last week. The central bank fixed the CNY reference contrarily upward to 6.583 this morning from Friday’s 6.600. As we have been documenting during this unabated “dollar” problem, whenever the PBOC attempts a contrary maneuver with the fix it typically sets off enormous fireworks. Sure [...]
In its December 2015 policy statement, the one that raised the federal funds target corridor, the FOMC changed the language surrounding its inflation stance. They still projected the 2%, of course, but were now indicating that they were more certain than ever about it. In many ways they had to shift the wording because of the actions; the prior passage [...]
Any ideas about junk bonds outperforming because of the booming economy confirmed by a monetary policy rate hike has been killed and buried. Conventionally, it was assumed that interest rates are not the primary “risk” parameter for high yield corporates of all flavors, and that is correct. Junk issues and lower tier obligors are creatures of the credit cycle, thus [...]
Oil prices plunged, junk bonds hit a 2 ½ year low, stocks took a nearly 4% hit, a junk bond fund halted withdrawals, the country’s biggest pipeline operator cut its dividend by 75% and two of the biggest mining companies in the world suspended theirs completely. It was not a good week for financial markets. And the Fed meets to hike [...]
Joining Anglo American and Kinder Morgan, Freeport-McMoRan announced the full suspension of its dividend. The clustered nature of these announcements only create questions about what might have changed recently, a possibility which actually holds very little mystery. After all, the company’s stock price has been falling steadily since about December 2010 (trading at about $60) so that surely isn’t the [...]
For the tenth straight week, dating back to the week just before the global liquidations in August, reported domestic crude inventories increased. At 489.4 million barrels, the current level of oil stock (excluding the SPR) is only slightly less than the record high of 490.9 million barrels reached the week of April 24. “Transitory” is dead. The increase in oil [...]
Despite everything that happened in July and August throughout the financial world, there remained a tendency to simply dismiss it as anomalous. That was curious in and of itself, but that the global liquidations then were not isolated but rather the latest in a continuing string of “odd” events strains such determined dimness. We have arrived at a point in [...]
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