Tag Archives: Featured

The prices of the metals rose a bit this quiet, holiday week. Merry Christmas! Speaking of Christmas, Keith’s brother who is an amateur woodworker of growing skill, gave him this present on Friday. Regular readers may recognize the design as our logo. Each “M” is made of a single piece of wood. They are stained or painted in the correct colors. The minute hand is silver and the hour hand is gold (paint, alas!) It now occupies a prominent place in the office. It is worth taking this time...

The US dollar traded heavily in the holiday-shortened week.  It slipped against all the major currencies.  The recovery in commodity prices, the new stimulus Chinese officials suggested, and the relatively high yields conspired to help lift the dollar-bloc currencies.  Them and the Swedish krona fared best.  Sterling, the Swiss franc, and Japanese yen managed to eke out small gains.   The economic calendar is light in the week ahead, and participation will be as well.  Nevertheless, it...

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The thinness of the order-driven capital markets is making price action that seems more inexplicable than usual.  The US dollar is mixed. It has recouped all the ground it lows against the euro yesterday, as the single currency briefly dipped below $1.09 in the North American morning.  It was unable to build on yesterday's gains that had carried it up to almost $1.0950.   Despite some fraying, the $1.08-$1.10 trading range still seems intact.   Sterling which had been sold to eight-month...

1.  China's Central Economic Work Conference is responsible for setting the annual GDP target. Although it was not formally announced, President Xi previously indicated that the goal for the economy to expand by around 6.5% a year through 2020.  More telling than the GDP target is the intentions expressed in the new slogan:  flexible monetary policy, forceful fiscal policy.  For Chinese officials, these are not ends in themselves but means to another end.  In this case, the goal is to...

Soggy Dollars There’s this article, saying rising rates are good for gold. It repeats two old errors: gold goes up, and things that cause it (e.g. a collapsing paper currency) are “good”. We have recently been emphasizing that interest does not correlate well with the price of gold. If you want to speculate on the gold price, rising rates may not be a good trading signal. Pure Gold Please forgive us once, the sin of linking an article by our own Keith Weiner. Keith argues that Yellen is...

On Wednesday Dec 16, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen announced that the Fed was raising the federal funds rate by 25 basis points. Let’s get one thing out of the way. This is not a move towards free markets. Whether the Fed sets interest lower, or whether it sets interest higher, we still have central planning. We still have price fixing of interest rates. Interest rates may be set too low. However, forcing interest up is no cure. We need to eliminate central planning, and move to a free...

1.  The election in Spain did not lift the uncertainty but re-redoubled it.  Given the outcome, it is difficult envision a majority government.  Purely looking at the numbers, a coalition between the Popular Party and the Socialists is simplest solution.  It is like Pasok and the New Democracy in Greece and the Christian and Social Democrats in Germany. While such grand coalitions maybe political expedient, it sends a powerful signal that there is not a significant difference between the...

(co-authored with my colleague Sam Waters) Inflation or indeed its opposite has driven monetary policy among the largest high income economies. With nominal rates thought to be bounded by zero, the US, UK, and Japan engaged in operations to increase the size of the central bank’s balance sheets as an unorthodox channel of easing monetary conditions. European central banks demonstrated interest rates can fall below zero.  Countries have adopted different measures of consumer inflation. ...

The prices of the metals were sagging. Silver was trading around $13.80. On Wednesday, Janet “Good News” Yellen said the magic words. The Federal Reserve hiked the federal funds rate by 25 basis points. The price of silver was surging in anticipation of the news (we assume). Within an hour or so of the announcement, it had spiked to $14.32, up 3.8% in a few hours. Despite our note on 8 November, this week we have seen more than one article claiming that a rising interest rate is good for...