Tag Archives: 5) Global Macro

China’s Passenger Car Association reported last week that retail sales of various vehicles totaled 1.78 million units in March 2019. The total was 12% less than the number of automobiles sold in March 2018. This matches the government’s data, both sets very clear as to when Chinese economic struggles accelerated: May 2018. For decades, there was just one way for China’s car market: up. Once the trend abruptly reversed...

There are no extreme “fixes” to secular declines in sales, profits, employment, tax revenues and asset prices. The saying “never let a crisis go to waste” embodies several truths worth pondering as the stock market nears new highs. One truth is that extreme policies that would raise objections in typical times can be swept into law in the “we have to do something” panic of a crisis. Thus wily insiders await (or trigger)...

The entire global status quo is on the cusp of the S-Curve decline phase. There is really only one unforgivable sin in the political realm, and that’s destroying the official narrative by revealing the facts of the matter. This is why whistleblowers who make public the secret machinery of the elaborately artful lies underpinning all official narratives are hounded to the ends of the Earth. Employees of state entities...

There is more than a little “let them eat brioche” in the blind faith that the masses’ patience for pillage is infinite. We’ve reached an interesting moment in history where we each have a simple choice: we either go with blind faith or we go with the bottom line, i.e. the facts of the matter. So far, 2019 is the year of Blind Faith, as the charts below illustrate: the bottom line no longer matters. Let’s start with...

Alhambra CEO Joe Calhoun discusses the charts from the past month and what they indicate. [embedded content] Related posts: Monthly Macro Chart Review: April 2019 Monthly Macro Chart Review – March (VIDEO) Monthly Macro Monitor – March 2019 (VIDEO) Monthly Macro Monitor – February (VIDEO) Monthly Macro Chart Review – March Monthly Macro Monitor –...

The eurodollar era saw not one but two credit bubbles. The first has been studied to death, though almost always getting it wrong. The Great Financial Crisis has been laid at the doorstep of subprime, a bunch of greedy Wall Street bankers insufficiently regulated to have not known any better. That was just a symptom of the first. The housing bubble itself was more than housing. What was going on in the shadows wasn’t...

Central bankers and media handlers must be laughing at how easy it is to slaughter the Bears and doubters with another fake-news round of trade-deal rumors and another Fed parrot being prompted to repeat some dovish mumbo-jumbo. It’s not just tough being a Bear in a market rigged by trade deal rumors, Federal Reserve dovishness, a tsunami of Chinese liquidity and $270 billion in stock buy-backs in the first quarter–it’s...

The world’s worst negotiating strategy is to make a crazy tulip-bubble stock market rally dependent on a trade deal that harms the interests of the U.S. The world’s worst negotiating tactics, the equivalent of handing the other side a loaded gun while waving a squirt gun around, are: 1. Declare a de facto political deadline for a deal. Constantly tweet that a deal is imminent. This gives the other side unparalleled...

The economic data reported over the last month managed to confirm both that the economy is slowing and that there seems little reason to fear recession at this point. The slowdown is mostly a manufacturing affair – and some of that is actually a fracking slowdown – but consumption has also slowed. On a more positive note, housing seems to have found its footing with lower rates and employment is still fairly robust....

Industrial gauges rebound on seansonality as well as policy easing. Chinese PMI readings moved back into expansion territory in March. The official Chinese manufacturing PMI rose to 50.5, up from 49.2 in February, and beating the Bloomberg consensus of 49.6, while the Caixin manufacturing PMI came in at 50.8, also up from 49.9 in February and beating the consensus expectation of 50.0. Details of the PMI survey report...