By Chris at www.CapitalistExploits.at As a teenager brimming with testosterone my reptilian brain loved action movies. Top of my list were Steven Seagal movies. Clearly it wasn’t for his acting skills, which are only marginally better than Barney the dinosaur. What I loved about Seagal was that he was both deadly and terribly fast. His opponents had mere seconds before their arms, legs, or other bones were snapped like...
Read More »Are Foreign Investors Done Selling Japanese Equities?
Introduction by George Dorgan My articles About meMy booksFollow on:TwitterFacebookGoogle +YoutubeSeeking AlphaCFA SocietyLinkedINEconomicBlogs Summary: Foreign investors have sold more than JPY8 trillion of Japanese equities through September. Nikkei technicals have improved and the yen has softened. Foreign investors have been net buyers for the past four weeks. Foreign investors were significant...
Read More »FX Weekly Preview: Six Thumbnail Sketches of This Week’s Dollar Drivers
Introduction by George Dorgan My articles About meMy booksFollow on:TwitterFacebookGoogle +YoutubeSeeking AlphaCFA SocietyLinkedINEconomicBlogs Summary: Four central banks meet, but expectations for fresh action are low. The US latest election news does not appear to be altering the projected electoral college outcome. UK press are speculating about Carney possibly resigning. We are skeptical. The...
Read More »The Bankrupt U.S. Healthcare System
The good news is there is a way to avoid failure and stagnation: avoid the mainstream like the plague. The mainstream became mainstream because it worked: the mainstream advice to “go to college and you’ll get a good job” worked, the mainstream financial plan of buying a house to build equity to pass on to your children worked, the mainstream of government regulation worked to the public’s advantage at modest cost to...
Read More »Emerging Markets: What has Changed
Summary Chinese President Xi has strengthened his grip on power. Mozambique said it is in “debt distress” and hired advisors for a debt restructuring. South Africa revised its macro forecasts in the Finance Ministry’s Medium-Term Budget Program. Chile’s ruling center-left coalition lost municipal elections. Stock Markets In the EM equity space as measured by MSCI, Poland (+3.2%), Chile (+3.1%), and Hungary...
Read More »Swiss Producer and Import Price Index, September 2016: 0.3% rise in Producer and Import Price Index
Comments by George Dorgan My articles About meMy booksFollow on:TwitterFacebookGoogle +YoutubeSeeking AlphaCFA SocietyLinkedINEconomicBlogs The Producer Price Index (PPI) or officially named "Producer and Import Price Index" describes the changes in prices for producers and importers. For us it is interesting because it is used in the formula for the Real Effective Exchange Rate. When producers and...
Read More »The Point of War Is Not to Win
Newfangled “Stimulus” In time, everything goes away. We are confident, for example, that it won’t be too long before the market cracks (please don’t hold us to this forecast, but don’t forget if it turns out to be correct!). U.S. corporate profits are falling. GDP is sinking. Productivity has slumped for the longest period since the 1970s. And going by the CAPE ratio, which looks at stock prices relative to the past...
Read More »Jim Grant Puzzled by the actions of the SNB
Retaken from Christoph Gisiger via Finanz und Wirtschaft, James Grant, Wall Street expert and editor of the investment newsletter «Grant’s Interest Rate Observer», warns of a crash in sovereign debt, is puzzled over the actions of the Swiss National Bank and bets on gold. From multi-billion bond buying programs to negative interest rates and probably soon helicopter money: Around the globe, central bankers are...
Read More »FX Daily, October 27: Rising Yields Continue to be the Main Driver
Swiss Franc EUR/CHF - Euro Swiss Franc, October 27(see more posts on EUR/CHF, ). - Click to enlarge GBP/CHF rates have levelled out over the past couple of weeks following some heavy losses earlier this month. The Pound crashed following UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s comments regarding the triggering of Article 50 early next year. Whilst we knew this was coming the timeline was shrouded in uncertainty and the...
Read More »Great Graphic: CRB Index Revisited
Summary: Interest rates and 10-year break-evens are rising. Some think the CRB Index is tracing out a head and shoulders bottom. We look for inflation in non-tradable goods’ prices (think services). Bond yields are rising. The break-even rates, which compare conventional yields to the inflation-linked securities are also rising. These developments, which we do not think can be attributed to central bank...
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