Tag Archives: 5) Global Macro

We’ve got to change our ornithological nomenclature. Hawks become doves because they are chickens underneath. Doves became hawks for reasons they don’t really understand. A fingers-crossed policy isn’t a robust one, so there really was no reason to expect the economy to be that way. In January 2019, especially the past few days, there are so many examples of flighty birds. Here’s an especially obvious, egregious one...

A discussion of the outlook for 2019 in the markets and the economy by Alhambra CEO Joe Calhoun and the Head of Alhambra Global Investment Research Jeff Snider. [embedded content] Related posts: Euro Credit: 2019 Outlook Gold Outlook 2019: Uncertainty Makes Gold A “Valuable Strategic Asset” – WGC Core Euro Sovereign Bonds 2019 Outlook A Couple...

Those households, enterprises and organizations that have no debt, a very low cost basis and a highly flexible, adaptable structure will survive and even prosper. The coming recession will be unevenly distributed, meaning that it will devastate many while leaving others relatively untouched. A few will actually do better in the recession than they did in the so-called “recovery.” I realize many of the concepts floated...

After a horrible December and a rough start to the year, as if manna from Heaven the clouds parted and everything seemed good again. Not 2019 this was early February 2015. If there was a birth date for Janet Yellen’s “transitory” canard it surely came within this window. It didn’t matter that currencies had crashed and oil, too, or that central banks had been drawn into the fray in very unexpected ways. Actually it...

These transition periods are often just this sort of whirlwind. One day the economy looks awful, the next impervious to any downside. Today, it has been the latter with the BLS providing the warm comfort of headline payrolls. For now, it won’t matter how hollow. Yesterday, completely different story. Apple got it started downhill and the ISM pushed it off the cliff. The tech giant’s CEO admitted the global economy is...

The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly. Buddha Review It’s that time of year again, time to cast the runes, consult the iChing, shake the Magic Eight Ball and read the tea leaves. What will happen in 2019? Will it be as bad as 2018 when positive returns were hard to come by, as rare as affordable...

It’s not yet clear that the stock market swoon is predictive or merely a panic attack triggered by a loss of meds. We contrarians can’t help it: when the herd is bullish, we start looking for a reversal. When the herd turns bearish, we also start looking for a reversal. So now that the herd is skittishly bearish, anticipating a recession, contrarians start wondering if a most hated rally is in the offing, one that would...

China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reports that the country’s official manufacturing PMI in December 2018 dropped below 50 for the first time since the summer of 2016. Many if not most associate a number in the 40’s with contraction. While that may or not be the case, what’s more important is the quite well-established direction. Coming in at 49.4 in December, it’s down in a straight line from 51.3 in August....

Recency bias is one thing. Back in late 2006/early 2007 when the eurodollar futures curve inverted, for example, it was a textbook case of mass delusion. All the schoolbooks and Economics classes had said that it couldn’t happen; not that it wasn’t likely, it wasn’t even a possibility. A full-scale financial meltdown was at the time literally inconceivable in orthodox thinking. A global panic, some sort of unserious...

It wasn’t that long ago that Apple was the most beloved stock by the hedge fund community, and although in recent months the company’s popularity faded somewhat among the 2 and 20 crowd it is still one of the most popular names among the professional investing community. Which on a day that saw AAPL stock tumble as much as 10% is clearly bad news. As Bloomberg notes, eight hedge funds that own large stakes in Apple have...