Tag Archive: Federal Reserve

FX Weekly Preview: Don’t Be Confused by the Facts or Why Neither the Data nor the Fed Will Alter Market Trends

2017-07-24

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2017-07-24

FOMC is the highlight of the week. Early look at July inflation in Europe may see less pressure. Overall household consumption in Japan is rising, helped by robust labor market, but little new price pressures. The data this week is expected to confirm what many investors have come to assume.

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Fighting inflation with FX, a real traders market

2017-07-20

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2017-07-20

Gain Change, Currencies Popularity, Reward: Risk Ratios, Average Holding Time
The much anticipated document (press release and link to full document) released by U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said the Trump administration aimed to reduce the U.S. trade deficit by improving access for U.S. goods exported to Canada and Mexico and contained the list of negotiating objectives for talks that are expected to begin in one month.

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US S&P 500 Index, Federal Funds Target, Manufacturing Payrolls, US Imports and US Banking Data: All Conundrums Matter

2017-07-19

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2017-07-19

Case Study: S&P 500 Index and Federal Funds Target
Since we are this week hypocritically obsessing over monetary policy, particularly the federal funds rate end of it, it’s as good a time as any to review the full history of 21st century “conundrum.” Janet Yellen’s Fed has run itself afoul of the bond market, just as Alan Greenspan’s Fed did in the middle 2000’s.

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Global Manufacturing PMI’s, Inflation and CPI: Some Global Odd & Ends

2017-07-09

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2017-07-09

Monetary Logic
When it comes to central bank experimentation, Japan is always at the forefront. If something new is being done, Bank of Japan is where it happens. In May for the first time in human history, that central bank’s balance sheet passed the half quadrillion mark.

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FX Daily, July 06: Stocks and Bonds Mostly Heavier, while Dollar Hovers Little Changed

2017-07-06

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2017-07-06

The US dollar is narrowly mixed against the major currencies after being confined to tight ranges through the Asian session and European morning. Equities are nursing small losses, and interest rates are pushing higher. The yield on the 10-year German Bund reached 50 bp for the first time since early 2016. Oil prices have steadied after yesterday's slide.

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Weird Obsessions

2017-07-04

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2017-07-04

US Banks Claims On Total Europe
People often ask why I care so much about China. In some ways the answer is obvious, meaning that China is the world’s second largest economy (the largest under certain methods of measurement). Therefore, marginal changes in the Chinese economy are important to understanding our own global situation.

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Central Banks Buying Stocks Have Rigged US Stock Market Beyond Recovery

2017-06-27

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2017-06-27

Central banks buying stocks are effectively nationalizing US corporations just to maintain the illusion that their “recovery” plan is working because they have become the banks that are too big to fail. At first, their novel entry into the stock market was only intended to rescue imperiled corporations, such as General Motors during the first plunge into the Great Recession, but recently their efforts have shifted to propping up the entire stock...

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FX Daily, June 22: Greenback Goes Nowhere Quickly, While Yen Remains Bid

2017-06-22

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2017-06-22

The summer doldrums begin early. The US dollar is little changed against most of the major currencies. Bond yields are mostly one-two basis points lower, and equity markets are mixed but with a downside bias. Oil prices slump more than 2% on Tuesday and again on Wednesday. This is weighing on bond yields and equities.

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Great Graphic: Selected GDP Performance since 2008 and Policy

2017-06-22

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2017-06-22

This Great Graphic was tweeted by Martin Beck, and it comes from Oxford Economics, using Haver Analytics database. It shows the relative economic growth since 2008 for the US, UK, Japan, and EMU.

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American Expectations, Chinese Prices

2017-06-20

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2017-06-20

FRBNY Survey Of Consumer Expectations, November 2013 - May 2017
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has for the past almost four years conducted its own assessment of consumer expectations.Though there are several other well-known consumer surveys, FRBNY adding another could be helpful for corroborating them. Unfortunately for the Fed, it has.

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“It’s A Perfect Storm Of Negativity” – Veteran Trader Rejoins The Dark Side

2017-06-16

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2017-06-16

After many months of fighting all the naysayers predicting the next big stock market crash, I am finally succumbing to the seductive story of the dark side, and getting negative on equities. I am often early, so maybe this means the rally is about to accelerate to the upside.

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New Gold Pool at the BIS Switzerland: A Who’s Who of Central Bankers

2017-06-13

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2017-06-13

Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Headquarters
A central bank Gold Pool which many people will be familiar with operated in the gold market between November 1961 and March 1968. That Gold Pool was known as the London Gold Pool.

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Is the Central Bank’s Rigged Stock Market Ready to Crash on Schedule?

2017-06-12

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2017-06-12

We just saw a major rift open in the US stock market that we haven’t seen since the dot-com bust in 1999. While the Dow rose by almost half a percent to a new all-time high, the NASDAQ, because it is heavier tech stocks, plunged almost 2%.

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The Internet Helped Kill Inflation In America, Says Credit Suisse

2017-06-02

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2017-06-02

Burkhard Varnhlot
Whether or not San Francisco Fed President John Williams is right about US inflation and employment being about as close to the central bank’s targets as investors have seen - as he told CNBC two days ago - is irrelevant: The central bank is going to raise interest rates two more times this year no matter what happens to consumer prices, says Credit Suisse Chief Investment Officer for Switzerland Burkhard Varnholt.

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Remembering A Still Falling Hero: Small Business

2017-05-30

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2017-05-30

On this holiday weekend known here in the U.S. as Memorial Day, I would like to make a slight turn in the narrative that many give little to no attention too, yet, is one of the most important underlying principles or fundamentals which helped shape, lift, mold, sustain, and create one of the world’s greatest economic powerhouses bar none.

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Less Than Nothing

2017-05-25

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2017-05-25

Eurodollar Futures Dimensions, 2005 - 2007
As I so often write, we still talk about 2008 because we aren’t yet done with 2008. It doesn’t seem possible to be stuck in a time warp of such immense proportions, but such are the mistakes of the last decade carrying with them just these kinds of enormous costs.

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The Wrong People Have An Innate Tendency To Stand Out

2017-05-12

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2017-05-12

Japan Government Bond Yields, January 1985 - May 2017
I don’t think Milton Friedman would have made much of chess player. For all I know he might have been a grand master or something close to that rank, but as much as his work is admirable it invites too the whole range of opposite emotion. He was the champion libertarian of the free market who rescued economics from the ravages of New Deal socialism, but in doing so he simply created the avenue for where Economics of that kind could be transposed...

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Euro Drivers

2017-05-03

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2017-05-03

Correlation between the change in the US-German two-year differential and euro remains robust. The German two-year yield has jumped in recent weeks but looks poised to slip back lower. US two-year yield has eased but is knocking on 1.30%, an important level.

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FX Weekly Preview: Looking Through the FOMC Meeting as it Looks Past Poor Q1 GDP

2017-05-01

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2017-05-01

US jobs and auto sales data may be more important than the FOMC meeting. Norway and Australia's central bank meets. Neither is expected to change policy. All three large countries that reported Q1 GDP figures last week - US, UK, France - disappointed expectations.

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Sweden’s Gold Reserves: 10,000 gold bars (pet rocks) shrouded in Official Secrecy

2017-04-28

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2017-04-28

In February 2017 while preparing for a presentation in Gothenburg about central bank gold, I emailed Sweden’s central bank, the Riksbank, enquiring whether the Riksbank physically audits Sweden’s gold and whether it would provide me with a gold bar weight list of Sweden’s gold reserves (gold bar holdings). The Swedish official gold reserves are significant and amount to 125.7 tonnes, making the Swedish nation the world’s 28th largest official gold...

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