I told you yesterday that the FOMC had set off some fireworks with their statements the other day, and those fireworks turned into a major sell-off in the risk assets yesterday… Stocks, currencies and commodities, all sold in a major way!
Stocks were down 2.5%, the euro (EUR) was down three whole cents, and gold lost ground… I would think that the 3-cent sell-off was a bit overdone… We'll have to wait-n-see… But there was good news for Japanese yen (JPY) holders… The yen hit a 15-year high yesterday, when it traded, albeit briefly, below 85… I was a foreign bond and currency trader at the old Mark Twain Bank in 1995, and I truly recall when yen was 85 in 1995… I have to say that, in some ways, those days are very reminiscent of today… Like investors flocking to yen when yields are non-existent and the country is wallowing in deflation and a rising national debt…
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The Return of the Misery Index
Here’s a cheery way to begin the week. For a brief moment on Friday, the “misery index” of the Jimmy Carter era reared its ugly head again.
Readers old enough to recall “the misery index” will remember it was computed by adding the inflation rate to the unemployment rate. On Friday, CNBC posted, and Drudge picked up, a brief story about how the misery index stands at its highest since 1983:
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