Tag Archives: newsletter

This post is extremely important for understanding the differences between CPI inflation in Europe and in the U.S. “Shelter” makes up 32.8% of the U.S. CPI basket, or 42% of the core inflation rate. It is mostly driven by “Owner’s equivalent rent of primary residence”. Shelter inflation in the U.S. is 3.2% per year (March 2016), but shelter inflation is only 1% in Europe. CPI in the United States (source) in % Shelter 32.776    Rent of primary residence 5.930   Lodging away from home...

Yesterday, China announced one of the most important tax reforms of the past twenty years.  It is replacing a business tax on gross revenue for non-manufacturing companies with a VAT.   Manufacturing companies have been subject to a VAT approach for a few years.  The reform extends it from manufacturing and a few services in a pilot program to industry-wide application. It will now cover construction, real estate, finance and consumer services. The shift to the VAT is expected to reduce...

EM ended the week on a firm note, which should carry over into this week.  The biggest near-term risk to EM is the US jobs data on Friday, as the weekly claims data points to another strong gain.  Otherwise, the global liquidity backdrop remains EM-supportive. Thailand reported April CPI earlier today.  It rose 0.07% year-over-year.  The market expected another decline after the  -0.5% in March.  This is well below the 1-4% target range.  However, growth remains quite robust, averaging...

In quiet turnover, with China, Hong Kong, Singapore and London markets closed, the US dollar is trading with a heavier bias against all the major currencies.  Lower commodity prices, including oil and copper, appears to be taking a toll on some emerging market currencies, including the South African rand. Japanese markets were closed last Friday and will be closed the next three sessions.  The yen appreciated nearly 5% in the aftermath of the FOMC/BOJ meetings last week.  The greenback’s...

  The Metals Take Off Photo via sprottmoney.com The price of gold shot up over $60 this week. The price of silver moved up proportionally, gaining over $0.85. The mood is now palpable. The feeling in the air is that of long suffering suddenly turned to optimism. Big gains, if not the collapse of the price-suppression cartel, are now inevitable. The headlines and articles, screaming for gold to hit $10,000 to $50,000, are pervasive. Today we won’t dwell on our favorite point that if the...

Sound money advocates are often hit with the charge of being “doom and gloomers.” Yes, we do warn that unsound monetary policies enable unsustainable fiscal commitments, which will lead eventually to a currency crisis. Sound money advocates are also often portrayed as party poopers. Yes, we do seek to take away the bottomless punch bowl of easy money and replace it with something more solid. However, we are not pessimists or killjoys by nature. To the contrary, we are quite optimistic about...

  Damned If You Do… After waking up on Thursday, we quickly glanced at the overnight market action in Asia and noticed that the Nikkei had tanked rather noticeably. Our first thought upon seeing this was “must be the yen” – and so it was. The BoJ cannot manipulate the yen anymore. June yen futures, daily – taking off again – click to enlarge. Given the BoJ’s bizarre plan to push consumer price inflation to a 2% annualized rate within [enter movable goal post here] years, Mr. Kuroda...

The die is cast.  The Federal Reserve is on an extended pause after the rate hike last December. The market remains convinced that the risk of a June hike are negligible (~ less than 12% chance).   The ECB has yet to implement the TLTRO and corporate bond purchase initiatives that were announced in March.  The impact of its programs have to be monitored before being evaluated.   It is unreasonable to expect any new initiative in the coming months.   The Bank of Japan did not take...

The Inflation Illusion We hear more and more talk about the possibility of imposing negative interest rates in the US. In a recent article former Fed chairman Ben Bernanke asks what tools the Fed has left to support the economy and inter alia discusses the use of negative rates. We first have to define what we mean by negative interest rates. For nominal rates it’s simple. When the interest rate charged goes negative we have negative nominal rates. To get the real rate of interest we have...

Speculators in the futures market made mostly small position adjustments in the sessions leading up to the FOMC and BOJ meetings.   During the Commitment of Traders reporting week ending April 26, the largest adjustment of speculative position in the currency futures was the 12.5 k build of gross long Australian dollar contracts. The accumulation lifted the gross position to 110.0k contracts, which surpasses the speculative gross long euro position (99.1k contracts) and the speculative...