Down and The Up Swing Who would have dreamt today’s great rally in Dow Jones Industrial Averages after yesterday’s over 200-point drop from the pre-FOMC levels to close. But that is what happened. At one point Dow was more than hundred-and-forty points in the red from previous close and then it staged a 277-point rally before closing out at…...
Noted for your morning ruminations or procrastinations – take your pick. These are various news items that I have read during the day and early morning in preparation for the trading day. I make notes as I read the articles. Some are trading related, some are economics related and others are just for intellectual stimulation. The Germans Are…
Eddy Elfenbein at Crossing Wall Street has a nice post about what the futures market expect (Fed rate hike) and when does it expect it?. Basically Elfenbein is commenting on Bespoke Investment Group’s post, “Countdown to Liftoff“. First let’s take the original post. Bespoke is using the market data and expert opinions about Fed to estimate the months left for…
Noted for your morning ruminations or procrastination – take your pick Finding a Tax Cut at the Pump – I would call lower oil prices “good deflation”—they’ll help reduce the costs of things that consumers are somewhat locked into paying for, like the gas for their cars or the heat in their homes. But technology,…
So far the week has stuck to the 2015 theme of volatility. One day up, next day down and then first-up-&-then-down day – up & down moves compacted in a six-and-half hour session. Let’s assess this week’s market action so far. The week started with much anticipated change of guard in Greece from the EU establishment-backed politicians…...
Noted for your morning ruminations or procrastination – take your pick. The “Efficiency” of the Market Doesn’t Matter to Smart Investors The EMH is essentially a political construct that argues that discretionary intervention is useless because “the market” is smarter than everyone else. It is a political argument against discretionary intervention that was constructed to…
Noted for your morning ruminations or procrastination – take your pick. Grexit: it is not the debt, it is the future. The reality is that so far EMU has been built in an asymmetric way: the ECB was designed as a strong anti-inflation central bank with the Bundesbank in mind and that served a purpose…
Noted for your morning ruminations or procrastination. The Oil Crash Is Making The Strong Stronger A survey of 225 companies by Barclays, a bank, forecasts that if crude settles in a range of $50-60 a barrel (it was below $50 in the middle of this week) the industry worldwide will cut its capital spending by…
The last week had lots of fire works Many of the economic reports were noteworthy but the biggest bang came from central banks. You can see our review of those days here (Jan 19, Jan 20, Jan 21, Jan 22, Jan 23). The coming week also has it own fair share of activities scheduled. The United…...
The market volatility continued this week and it was best demonstrated by the Shanghai Composite Index, the stock market index of all stocks traded at the Shanghai Sock Exchange. In 2014, Shanghai Composite was the best index returning +52.9%. During the last 90 days of the year, it was up almost +40%. By the end of second week of…...
Noted for your weekend ruminations or procrastination. Disinflation And Weaker Growth Put Pressure On Asian Central Banks Chinese factories were forced to cut prices for the sixth straight month in January to sell their products, while economic growth in South Korea slowed sharply, raising the prospect of more policy easing from major central banks in…
Many economic reports came out today. Some painted good pictures and some painted bad pictures for their respective economies. Euro Zone The economic activities in the two major economies, Germany and France, are not improving tremendously. The EZ’s Flash Manufacturing and Services PMI came in line at 51.0 and 52.3 respectively. Belgian NBB Business Climate was -8.8 below…...
Noted for you morning ruminations or procrastination Why The China Pessimists Will Be Proved Wrong Sustainable quality growth is the watchword for 2015. There is a near consensus that China’s economic growth will cool further in 2015. Some analysts are predicting a growth target of about 7.3% this year, but many think the official growth target is…
Euro Zone Today, the European Central Bank came out with its big bazooka. It announced a bigger than expected expansion of the quantitative easing and kept the Minimum Bid Rate at the current level of 0.05%. The Euro Zone Consumer Confidence came at -9, which was better than the forecast of -11 and last month’s reading of -11.…...
The expansion of the quantitative easing by the ECB has put a renewed pressure of the greenback to go up. Mind you euro is the biggest component of the dollar basket and the QE has been hugely negative for the euro. When the U.S. dollar goes up then naturally the commodities priced against it will go…...
