Tag Archives: 5.) Alhambra Investments

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen hasn’t just been busy hawking cash management bills, her department has also been filling back up with the usual stuff, too. Regular T-bills. Going back to October 14, at the same time the CMB’s have been revived, so, too, have the 4-week and 13-week (3-month). Not the 8-week, though. Of the first, it’s been a real tsunami at this tenor, too. Up to early August, Treasury had regularly (weekly) sold $40 billion in one-month paper. From...

A couple of weeks ago the 10 year Treasury note yield rose 16 basis points in the course of 5 trading days. That move was driven by near term inflation fears as I discussed last week. Long term inflation expectations were and are well behaved. I wrote nearly 2000 words last week about that change in inflation expectations and I’m so glad you took the time to read it. And now you can forget it because over the next four days all but 2 basis points of the move in the...

There were no surprises in today’s US GDP data. As expected, output sharply decelerated, modestly missing much-reduced expectations. The continuously compounded annual rate of change for Q3 2021 compared to Q2 was the tiniest bit less than 2% (1.99591%) given most recent expectations had been closer to 3%. It was only two months ago, mid-August, when the Blue Chip consensus pegged quarterly growth at better than 7%. Such a fast drop-off immediately brings up delta...

Extraordinary times call for extraordinary commitment. I never set out nor imagined that a quarter century after embarking on what I thought would be a career managing portfolios, researching markets, and picking investments, I’d instead have to spend a good amount of my time in the future taking apart how raw economic data is collected, tabulated, and then disseminated. Yet here we are. I’m not saying, nor have I ever alleged, the government is cheating, cooking the...

Over the past week and a half, Treasury has rolled out the CMB’s (cash management bills; like Treasury bills, special issues not otherwise part of the regular debt rotation) one after another: $60 billion 40-day on the 19th; $60 billion 27-day on the 20th; and $40 billion 48-day just yesterday. Treasury also snuck $60 billion of 39-day CMB’s into the market on the 14th to go along with the two scheduled 119-day CMB’s during this period. That’s a quick $220 billion...

This is yet another one of those crucial recent developments which should contribute much clarity about the economic situation, yet is exploited in other ways (political) adding only more to the general state of economic confusion. The shelves may be empty in a lot of places around the country, leaving anyone with the impression there just aren’t enough goods. Shortage of goods, everyone’s thinking, by virtue of economics (small “e”) it will be another significant...

Do the similarities outweigh the differences? We better hope not. There is a lot about 2021 that is shaping up in the same way as 2018 had (with a splash of 2013 thrown in for disgust). Guaranteed inflation, interest rates have nowhere to go but up, and a certified rocking recovery restoring worldwide potential. So said all in the media, opinions written for everyone in it by none other than central bank models. It was going to be awesome. Straight away, however,...

The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial stock averages made new all time highs last week as bonds sold off, the 10 year Treasury note yield briefly breaking above 1.7% before a pretty good sized rally Friday brought the yield back to 1.65%. And thus we’re right back where we were at the end of March when the 10 year yield hit its high for the year. Or are we? Well, yes, the 10 year is back where it was but that doesn’t mean everything else is and, as you’ve probably...

You don’t have to take my word for it. QE doesn’t work and it never has. That’s not just my assessment, pull out any chart of interest rates for wherever gets the misfortune of having been wasted with one of these LSAP’s. If none handy, then just read what officials and central bankers write about their own programs (or those of their close and affectionate counterparts). After nearly a decade of Abenomics in Japan, the latest Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida...

Alhambra’s Bob Williams answers the question, “What do I do if I choose the wrong Medicare Plan?”. [embedded content] [embedded content] You Might Also Like Weekly Market Pulse: Perception vs Reality 2021-10-18 It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities Some see the cup as half empty. Some see the cup as half full. I see the cup as too...