Global Market Commentary, Analysis and Investments
The newspapers and TV channels reported the Dow 15,000 story last week as though it were just a stepping stone on the way to 16,000… or 20,000… or 30,000.
Heck, the sky’s the limit!
Investors have reached a new level of bullishness. They’re borrowing again to buy stocks, confident that prices go in only one direction.
[Read more...]Last month, I wrote about the current debate over the 2010 paper by Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart (hereinafter referred to as RR) on the correlation between debt and GDP growth. I said that the most important part of their work, which is the construction of an enormous database on debt and financial crises over the last few hundred years, was to be found in their book This Time Is Different and elsewhere. And their fundamental conclusion: Debt is not a problem until it becomes one. And then it reaches a critical mass and you have what they call the Bang! moment.
[Read more...]When investors are fearful, they look to hedge their portfolios by buying “insurance” that will protect them if the market falls.
Right now fear is super-high, says Christopher Cole at Artemis. This past September, he says it cost more than ever to hedge against a collapse — even more than in 2008, when everyone was scared the whole system was going to blow. “Ironically,” Cole writes, “markets are at their very best when everyone is scared out of their minds.”
[Read more...]The Philly Fed manufacturers survey for February plunged from negative 5.8 to negative 12.5, the worst reading in eight months. A big miss from the +1 reading that was expected. Ouch!
Our friends at ZeroHedge point out that hope springs eternal:
“Oddly enough survey participants have been hoping for a brighter future for 4 years now. Expect the sellside penguins to say that this number too should be ignored, just like the initial claims earlier, and the new housing starts yesterday. After all one should ignore all data that does not fit the goalseeked script of a centrally-mandated ‘recovery.’”
[Read more...]He has what seems like the easiest job in the world. He manages $4 billion of assets on which he earns fees. And all he does is buy US Treasuries.
His name is Van Hoisington. No man has been more right about interest rates in the last two decades. Van thought they would go down — and has thought so since 1990. So they have. As they fell, the value of Van’s bonds rose. Since he’s been right, his track record is ridiculously good. He has posted a 9.1% annualized return over the last ten years…in a bond fund!
[Read more...]The lights of the Mogambo Security System (MSS) glowed dimly in the gloom of the bunker as I cowered in the darkness, and there were no sounds except the thumping, thumping, thumping of my terrified heart at The World Outside (TWO), a place I consider to be a vicious, hostile environment containing not only enemies of every sort, both real and imagined, but family members who want to know if I am coming out for dinner, or to tell me that someone is on the phone for me, or that somebody is going to greedily eat the last of my treasured Double-Stuf Oreos, somehow trying to get me outside and into their clutches so that they can take all my money and ask me to sign various forms and documents.
Well… As I expected, the euro (EUR) really ran up on Friday’s trading, as shorts were covered and trading books were squared for year-end. I truly believe that this euro-buying could be reversed as we go through the first month of 2011… The reason I say that is I truly believe that the euro will come under pressure, as the Eurozone gets probed to come up with better solutions to their periphery countries’ problems. I expect Germany to balk at many things, and when they balk, the runners get to move up…the runners being the dollar, and gold…
[Read more...]As a paranoid and angry lunatic, I am always nervous and on the suspicious lookout for subtle signs of danger that I know are all around me because the foul Federal Reserve has created, and is still creating, So Freaking Much Money (SFFM), which means that the terror of ruinous inflation in prices is a dead-bang, take-it-to-the-bank, guaranteed certainty.
[Read more...]“The Day of Reckoning has come!�
So said New Jersey’s new governor-elect.
New Jersey is hardly unique. Practically every government in the developed world faces the same problem. National. State. Local. Expenses grew during the boom years. We all know why. Politicians prefer to spend then to save. They buy votes with other people’s money. That’s why they like programs for poor people. They come cheap. But the votes they buy on credit are even cheaper. Give a job…a handout…free drugs…housing subsidies – and send the bill to the next generation. With declining interest rates and an expanding economy, governments could get away with it. Low interest rates made deficits easy to finance and reduced the cost of refinancing existing debt too.
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U.S. Shale Gale vs. the Debt Leviathan
The wind was blowing so hard on the banks of the River Thames we had to replay it a few times to hear correctly.
“The need for OPEC to…”
We turned up the volume some more…
“The need for OPEC to be a player in the U.S. oil market isn’t really there. We’re not going to be depending on them like we used to.”
[Read more...]Click for detailed story