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9 Dec, 2014
Deflation? Not US
The dramatic (40%!) drop in oil prices has caused some hysteria in the media about the rising risks of deflation. After all, lower energy prices is deflationary. Well, that's not quite true.Inflation ...
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5 Dec, 2014
Labor Market
Oh, this was a strong report this morning, on every level:321,000 net new jobs in November.10 consecutive months of +200,000 payroll gains (228,000 on average over the past year).Labor force expanded ...
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3 Dec, 2014
Petropolitics-II (Implications)
Declining oil prices provide a net benefit to the global economy. A rule of thumb is every $10/barrel transfers around $330 billion, about 0.4% of world GDP, between oil producers to oil consumers. So ...
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2 Dec, 2014
Petropolitics
For the past few years, oil has held steady at around $100/barrel, as supply and demand were largely held in check. Supply was disrupted in Libya and South Sudan, Venezuela saw production tumble due ...
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25 Nov, 2014
EM Thoughts...Not There Yet
Successful investing is frequently about balancing valuation with growth prospects. We would all love to invest in cheap assets with strong prospective growth, but most of the time, we're forced to ...
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24 Nov, 2014
Jobs
There's no doubt that the headline unemployment rate (5.8%) does not tell the full picture of the job market. Specifically, there have been three areas of concern not reflected in the (low-ish) ...
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20 Nov, 2014
Pressure Building
Yes, we all know the European economy is not growing: stagnant, sclerotic, etc. But this fact is not a crisis. It's a concern, a problem, a challenge, but not a crisis.It is hard to get ...
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18 Nov, 2014
Spreads
An interesting graphic from Ken Leech of Western Asset showing that spreads in Bondland this year are pretty much unchanged from the start of the year. This, despite the rally in US equities and solid ...
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17 Nov, 2014
Money Matters
When the Fed embarked on Quantitative Easing (QE), many prominent economists warned this would lead to hyperinflation (or, at least, an wanted surge in inflation). Didn't happen. With QE ended, many ...
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14 Nov, 2014
Selected Fun Facts
Some fun facts about this year (courtesy Michael Hartnett of Merrill Lynch):US equities (+14%) are ahead of European equities (-6%) by the widest margin since 1976.US large cap is beating US small cap ...
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13 Nov, 2014
"Special"?
The following item caught my eye on Bloomberg:Los Angeles City Employees' Retirement System is scheduled to discuss a staff report requested at a prior meeting on the pension's specialized private ...
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11 Nov, 2014
Logistics
Not enough attention is being paid to the work slowdown/stoppage going on at West Coast ports.The last time there was a disruption was in 2002, and it ended 10 days later only after a presidential ...
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11 Nov, 2014
How The Mighty Fall
Between March 2000 and October 2002, the NASDAQ Index fell 75%, from over 5,000 to under 1,300. Of course, valuations were beyond silly at the peak, and I confess, following the collapse, I thought my ...
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11 Nov, 2014
Happy Singles Day!
11 November is celebrated in the US as Veteran's Day and throughout Europe as Armistice Day, marking the armistice ending the First World War in 1918. Government agencies and banks are closed for the ...
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4 Nov, 2014
US Manufacturing
Wow. The good people at the Institute for Supply Management survey American manufacturers every month and ask, "how's business?" They then create a diffusion index based on those responses: a scale ...
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4 Nov, 2014
PIMCO PAID BILLIONAIRE GROSS $290 MILLION BONUS IN 2013
"In the mutual fund world its no doubt on the very high side," said Michael Rosen, chief investment officer at Angeles Investment Advisors. "This is a company with $2 trillion - that's an awful lot of money & that's an awful lot of money in fees".
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3 Nov, 2014
It's a Big World
With apologies to Walt Disney, the global economy is getting, well, more global, and, intuitively, companies' sensitivities to global macro factors increase in proportion to their global revenues.When ...
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31 Oct, 2014
QE Impact?
QE3 (the policy, not a new Cunard ship) was launched 2 years ago and ended this week. The expanded it balance sheet by $1.6 trillion, or 62%.Economists (and other, smarter people) will debate the ...
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29 Oct, 2014
DOUBLE LEVERAGE?
Oil prices are down about $30 from their highs; great news for consumers and the big oil importers (China, Korea, India). Not so good news for the big producers (Saudi, Russia, Venezuela).Oil ...
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28 Oct, 2014
BRASIL
A hundred years ago, I studied international relations in school (the Sykes-Picot Treaty was a hotly-debated current topic among us). For the few of us focused on the Third World (now given the more ...
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27 Oct, 2014
The Present is the Future (at least in bond land)
In our long-term assumptions, we generally assume that the total return in fixed income is pretty close to its starting yield. That's because a bond's total return is a function of two ...
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27 Oct, 2014
BATTLE FOR SHARE OF PIMCO SPOILS IS GETTING HOTTER
Mr. Rosen said the new multiperson investment team that replaced Mr. Gross on the fund might improve its recent performance, but that might not be enough to retain investors. "It may be better, but it is not what investors signed up for..."
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24 Oct, 2014
I'm Not Dead!
A great line from a great Monty Python movie, and another crisp cover from The Economist: ...
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23 Oct, 2014
Kids!
On a totally non-market subject, more young adults are living with their parents, and here's the graph to prove it (courtesy of Hugo Scott-Gall of Goldman Sachs). Top line is US, bottom line is ...
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