Tag Archives: newsletter

The decentralized nature of the Federal Reserve lends itself to both a division of labor and competitive analysis.  Some Federal Reserve branches have alternative inflation measures and trade-weighted indices of the dollar.  On the whole, this seems beneficial for investors and policymakers. One tool developed by the Atlanta Fed has been widely embraced.  It is a tracking measure for US GDP using real-time data.  Yesterday the New York Fed announced that it had created its own GDP...

The US dollar is well bid in the Europe and is poised to start the North American session with the wind to its back.  Despite firmer equity and industrial metal prices, most emerging market currencies are also succumbing to the rebounding greenback. The euro has yet to convincingly breakout of the range that has confined it this month.  That would require a break of the $1.1300 area.  However, as we have noted the two-year interest rate differential between the US and Germany, which does...

This free portfolio is offered to help investors understand that what they may have learnt about risk and return do not correspond to the realities of investing today. COMMENTS ON THE PORTFOLIO Unfortunately Sketchers (SKX), which lost more than 12% has not yet bottomed out. There is a theory, which says that the market is always right, but I believe that the market is always wrong. SKX’s data indicates the latter: Q1 EPS Forecast Q2 EPS Forecast Current Year Forecast Next Year...

  Mr. X and his Mysterious Benefactors A recent photograph of Mr. X. Photo credit; Peter Foley / Bloomberg via Getty Images As the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reports, a money-laundering alarm was triggered at AmBank in Malaysia, a bank part-owned by one of Australia’s “big four” banks, ANZ. What had triggered the alarm? Money had poured into the personal account of one of the bank’s customers, a certain Mr. X, in truly staggering amounts. Hundreds of millions of dollars...

A Return to Gold Sorry boys and girls, you’ll have to start without us… Photo credit: Susan Candelario BUENOS AIRES, Argentina ­– “What if you were appointed to head the Fed? In your first week on the job, what would you do?” The question was not exactly serious. Neither was the answer. “We’d call in sick.” Drought, old age, traffic congestion, meanness, purple drink, bad taste, rap, suburbs, cancer, government, Hillary Clinton, restaurant music, shorts, Facebook, obesity – there are a...

Every so often there is a market move that appears inexplicable.  The conundrum now is the yen’s strength.  Of course, there are numerous attempts to shed light on the yen’s rise, but many, like ourselves, are not very satisfied. Perhaps part of the problem is that many participants are looking for a single narrative that explains why the dollar peaked against the yen last June near JPY125.85 and fell to almost JPY107.60 yesterday.   However, closer inspection suggests the dollar’s...

There is a common ploy used by many analysts and reporters that often simply does not stand up to close scrutiny, and would in fact be mocked in the university.   The ploy is to take two time series and put them on the same chart but use different scales. Such a ploy often is used to demonstrate a closer relationship between the two variables than is actually the case.  A current example is a chart of the dollar-yen rate and Japanese stocks. Here is a Great Graphic that was in the...

There are three highlights to the foreign exchange market today.  First, the yen is marginally softer.  The yen's strength this month has been the main development.  After making a marginal new high yesterday, some semblance of stability emerged in North America yesterday, and this has carried over into today's activity.   The greenback largely held above JPY107.90 and rose to JPY108.40 in late Asia.  It has been consolidating in the European morning.  Japan's Finance Minister appeared...

  No Correction Yet Photo via Museo del Oro / Bogota Late last week the HUI Index broke out to new highs for the move, and so did the XAU (albeit barely, so it did not really confirm the HUI’s breakout as of Friday). Given that gold itself has not yet broken out to a new high for the move, it would normally be expected to do so, as Jordan Roy-Byrne argues here. The chart below shows the situation as of Friday (HUI, HUI-gold ratio and gold): The HUI and the HUI-gold ratio have broken...

  A Rara Avis – The World Is Poorer Without Him In It Dr. Tibor Machan, libertarian philosopher Our friend Dr. Tibor Machan, a greatly valued contributor to this site, has passed away on March 24. Unfortunately, we haven’t known Tibor for very long. We got into touch with him after reading some of his work at Mises.org and the Daily Bell, and asked him if he would like to occasionally publish articles on Acting Man as well. To our delight, he immediately agreed. In the time we were in...