Tag Archives: newsletter

Legendary investor and Berkshire Hathaway vice-chair Charles Munger recently stated: “The world is not driven by greed. It’s driven by envy.” I think this perfectly encapsulates our current investing era. In a day and age where social media has replaced not only traditional news media but human interaction, where influencers and gamers are top career aspirations for the nation’s youth, where artists (content creators) are paid by the number of followers, likes, and...

Energy is a highly regulated industry across the world. There is less debate about the need for government control when it comes to the oil and gas sector. The arguments that most people accept for government intervention in energy, whether in the name of energy access, national security, or climate change mitigation, all share the same general premise: that energy is too important to be left to the whims of the free market. But this year, the world has been thrust...

Overview: There are two themes today. First, there has been a modest bout of profit-taking on Chinese stocks (and yuan) after last week’s surge. Second, the ahead of the five G10 central bank meeting this week a series of market-sensitive economic reports, a consolidative tone is seen in most of the capital markets. Most of the large bourses in the Asia Pacific region fell, led by a 2.2% loss in Hong Kong and 3% loss in its index of mainland shares. Europe’s Stoxx...

It is a huge week for major central bank policy announcements, where downshifts are expected from the Fed, ECB, BoE, SNB. Heading into the announcements, US CPI will help shape expectations. MON: UK GDP Estimate (Oct), Chinese M2/New Yuan Loans (Nov). TUE: OPEC MOMR; BoE Financial Stability Report; German CPI Final (Nov), UK Unemployment Rate (Oct)/Claimant Count (Nov), EZ ZEW (Dec), US CPI (Nov), Japanese Tankan (Q4), New Zealand Current Account (Q3). WED: FOMC...

Bank Syz has collaborated with Taurus to launch its new digital asset offer Syz Crypto. It will cover the safekeeping and trading of digital assets to the Bank’s private, professional and institutional clients. Concretely, the Bank has integrated Taurus-PROTECT, a technology that allows the custody of digital assets such as cryptocurrencies, tokenized securities as well as NFTs and Taurus-EXPLORER for the connectivity to >15 blockchain protocols, including Bitcoin...

That’s how things fall apart: insiders know but keep their mouths shut, outsiders are clueless, and the decay that started slowly gathers momentum as the last of the experienced and competent workforce burns out, quits or retires. Outsiders are shocked when things fall apart. Insiders are amazed the duct-tape held this long.The erosion of critical skills and institutional knowledge is invisible to outsiders, while everyone inside who saw the unstoppable decay...

The G10 currencies traded with a heavier bias against the dollar last week. The Swiss franc was the sole exception, and it edged up about 0.25%. The thwarted putsch in Germany and the relaxation of vaccine and quarantine protocols in China were notable developments. The weakness in European and American equities and oil helped account for the underperformance of the Norwegian krone and Canadian dollar. At the same time, the recovery in US 10-year yields after a more...

Half of the G10 central banks meet in the week ahead. The Fed is first on December 14, and the ECB, BOE, Swiss National Bank, and Norway's Norges Bank meet the following day. Before turning a thumbnail sketch of the central banks, let us look at the November US CPI, which will be reported as the Fed's two-day meeting gets underway on December 13. The terms of the debate have shifted. It is no longer about when US inflation will peak but how fast it will come down....

At least since 2008, the financial world has been in a financial spiral caused by central banks’ growing monetary impression. As a consequence, key economic concepts (e.g., that business cycles are caused by credit expansion, and higher prices by monetary expansion) started to be considered just “old ideas” and their defenders prophets of the apocalypse. Some economists, especially the modern monetary theory (MMT) defenders, attempted to substitute these ideas with...

There are many mistakes in the G7 agreement to put a cap on Russian oil. The first one is that it does not hurt Russia at all. The agreed cap, at $60 a barrel, is higher than the current Urals price, above the five-year average of the quoted price and higher than Rosneft’s average netback price. According to Reuters, “the G7 price cap will allow non-EU countries to continue importing seaborne Russian crude oil, but it will prohibit shipping, insurance, and...