Two weeks ago, I wrote about two consecutive days of currency rallies “for the ages”… Well, yesterday we had currency and metals sell-offs “for the ages”… It was a real bloodletting, and after all my talk about “tub thumping” yesterday morning, the only things to get “thumped” were the risk assets… Stocks, currencies, commodities and metals (I know they’re a commodity, but I like to separate them)… The commodity and metals sell-off was nasty, as was the sell-off in the euro (EUR)…
[Read more...]How Will Census Workers Affect the Jobs Report?
September 3, 2010 By Leave a Comment
It was a ping-pong day for the currencies, back and forth over the net… The net being the “level of the day?… For instance, the Aussie dollar (AUD) played over the 91-cent net all day, and the euro played over the 1.2820 level all day.
[Read more...]The Two Divergent Views of Currency Market Investors
August 6, 2010 By Leave a Comment
The weekly jobs numbers released yesterday morning showed 25K more people signed up for unemployment last week than the week prior. The number of continuing claims declined slightly, but remains above 4.5 million. The data confirms what everyone outside of CNBC has been saying for quite a while; this is a ‘jobless recovery' (if you can even call it a recovery!) What growth we have had has been spurred by government spending, the private sector just isn't expanding, and won't probably expand for some time.
[Read more...]Confusing “Employment? With “Productivity?
August 5, 2010 By Leave a Comment
The Dow rose 44 points yesterday. Gold gained 8 bucks. What to make of it?
One of the advantages of being on the road is that you don't get a whole lot of time to check the news. As the inimitably quotable Mark Twain famously observed, “If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're misinformed.?
[Read more...]US Jobs Data: One Reason Why It Might Not Be Getting Better
July 20, 2010 By Leave a Comment
And here's an interesting item that is going around the Internet: If July has ides, this is it.
Ever Had A Job?
A chart that showed past presidents and the percentage of each president's cabinet appointees who had previously worked in the private sector – you know, a real life business, not a government job? Remember what that is? A private business?
[Read more...]Dollar Gets Sold On Bad Data Prints
July 6, 2010 By Leave a Comment
The currencies traded yesterday, but in very tight ranges, as the US was on holiday. This morning, the bias is to sell dollars, much like it was on Friday before the liquidity of Europe went to the pubs… Let's go back now, and revisit Friday's action…
Well… There was more proof on Friday that the double dip is coming…
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“Risk Off” Currencies Rally on Greek Credit Downgrade
We had a busy but manageable day on the trading desk yesterday, which was all we could ask for with both Chuck and Aaron traveling to Las Vegas and with me tied up in meetings all day. The newest member of our WorldMarkets family, Antione, spent his first full day on the phones, and did quite well according to the rest of the gang.
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