Tag Archives: newsletter

Yesterday, IHS Markit reported that the manufacturing turnaround its data has been suggesting stalled. After its flash manufacturing PMI had fallen below 50 several times during last summer (only to be revised to slightly above 50 every time the complete survey results were tabulated), beginning in September 2019 the index staged a rebound jumping first to 51.1 in that month. Subsequent months of data had continued the trend. By November, the PMI registered 52.6...

◆ Gold has surged to test $1,600 per ounce, up 4% so far in 2020 and building on the stellar near 18.9% gain in 2019 ◆ Gold is testing it’s highest levels since 2013 as investors diversify into gold; Goldman, Citi and other gold analysts are advocating gold bullion as important hedge in crisis ◆ Oil prices have surged with Brent crude reaching $70 per barrel; concern over oil supplies from Iran, Iraq and other nations as U.S. State Department warns of attacks on...

[This essay is chapter 9 of Egalitarianism as a Revolt against Nature, and Other Essays] It should be no news by this time that intellectuals are fully as subject to the vagaries of fashion as are the hemlines of women’s skirts. Apparently, intellectuals tend to be victims of a herd mentality. Thus, when John Kenneth Galbraith published his best-selling The Affluent Society in 1958, every intellectual and his brother was denouncing America as suffering from undue and...

Swiss Franc The Euro has fallen by 0.06% to 1.0851 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, January 6(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: The global capital markets have yet to stabilize amid heightened geopolitical tension. Even though the US stock market finished last week off its lows, the sell-off continued in the Asia Pacific region. Japan’s markets re-opened after an extended holiday, and the yen, at three-month...

USD/CHF fails to hold onto recovery gains from multi-month lows. Doubts over Iran/Iraq’s capacity to retaliate the US might have shuffled the risk tone. Comments from the NY Fed, GT headlines add to the greenback’s weakness. USD/CHF refrains from extending the recent recovery while trading around 0.9700 during the pre-European session on Monday. The pair seems to portray the recent risk reshuffle and the US catalysts while stepping back from the weekly top. Risk...

Full liquidity returns to the markets gradually in the coming days, and the week ahead culminates with the US December employment report. The highlights include the service and composite PMI readings, and December eurozone and China’s CPI. The UK reports December PMIs, November GDP, and industrial output figures. While the economic reports may pose some headline risk, the course of events suggests investors will look past the data. How the economies perform in Q1 20...

Swatch CEO Nick Hayek has offered an olive branch to the competition commission. (Keystone / Salvatore Di Nolfi) Switzerland’s largest watch maker, Swatch, says it will limit the number of movements it makes for the industry in a bid to end a long-running stand-off with the anti-trust regulator. At the end of last year, the Competition Commission (Comco) temporarily suspended deliveries of watch movements from Swatch’s ETA unit to big rivals from January 1, 2020....

Parabolic moves end when the confidence that the parabolic move can’t end becomes the consensus. The consensus seems to be that the stock market is on its way to much higher levels, and soon. The near-term targets for the S&P 500 (SPX, currently around 3,235) range from 3,500 to 4,000, with longer-term targets reaching “the sky’s the limit.” The consensus reasoning goes like this: — Central banks can print a lot more money — Stocks rise when central banks...

While the global economic backdrop remains favorable for EM, rising geopolitical risks will be a growing headwind. The EM VIX surged above 18% Friday as Iran tensions escalated, the highest since early December. With these tensions likely to persist, EM may remain under some pressure for the time being. High oil prices are positive for the exporters in Latin America and the Middle East but negative for the importers in Asia and Eastern Europe. AMERICAS Chile reports...

Some economists, such as the 2017 Nobel Laureate Richard Thaler and his colleague Cass Sunstein, have proposed an unusual justification for government interference with people’s choices. They do not intend, they say, to override the preferences that people have. They don’t want to tell people what they “should” want, according to an external standard that people don’t accept. They claim, however, that accepting the actual preferences people have still leaves room for...