Category Archive: 5.) Alhambra Investments

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Auto Sales Up Last Month, But Why?

2017-10-09

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2017-10-09

US Vehicle Sales, Jan 2014 - Jul 2017
Auto sales rebounded sharply in September, with most major car manufacturers reporting better numbers. Sales at Ford were up 8.9% last month from September 2016; +11.9% at GM; Toyota +14.9%; Nissan +9.5%; Honda +6.8%. The only negatives were reported by FCA (-9.7%) and Mercedes (-1.7%).

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Incomes Are What Matters, So Bad Month, Bad Year, Bad Decade

2017-10-08

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2017-10-08

US Real Personal Income, Dec 2013 - Aug 2017
Sometimes economics can be complicated, such as why the labor market has slowed in such lingering fashion since early 2015. Sometimes economics can be easy, such as why there is so much less to the economy this year than thought. The easy part relates to the hard part. The labor market slowed and so did national income. Though so much of official focus is on debt supplementation, it’s always, always about income.

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Bi-Weekly Economic Review: Maximum Optimism?

2017-10-07

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2017-10-07

The economic reports of the last two weeks were generally of a more positive tone. The majority of reports were better than expected although it must be noted that many of those reports were of the sentiment variety, reflecting optimism about the future that may or may not prove warranted. Markets have certainly responded to the dreams of tax reform dancing in investors’ heads with US stock markets providing a steady stream of all time highs, bond...

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US: Reflation Check

2017-10-05

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2017-10-05

US Recovery, 1925 - 1945
There is a difference between reflation and recovery. The terms are similar and relate to the same things, but in many ways the latter requires first the former.  To get to recovery, the economy must reflate if in contraction it was beaten down in money as well as cyclical forces. In the Great Crash of 1929 and after, reflation was required because of the wholesale devastation of the money supply. 

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Eurozone: Distinct Lack of Good Faith

2017-10-03

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2017-10-03

European Growth Baseline, Jan 1995 - 2017
The erosion of social order in any historical or geographic context is gradual; until it isn’t. Germany has always followed a keen sense of this process, having experienced it to every possible extreme between the World Wars. Hyperinflationary collapse doesn’t happen overnight; it took three years for the Weimar mark to disintegrate, and then Weimar Germany. Even Nazism wasn’t all it once. What was required was continued denial especially on the...

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Not Political Risk For China, But Unwelcome Reality

2017-10-01

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2017-10-01

PBOC Balance Sheet, Aug 2011 - 2017
China’s Communist Party concluded the Third Plenum of its 18th Congress in November 2013. It was the much-discussed reform mandate that many in the West took to mean another positive step toward neo-liberal reform. At its center was supposed to be a greater role for markets particularly in the central task of resource allocation. In some places, the Party’s General Secretary Xi Jinping was hailed as the great Chinese reformer.

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Location Transformation or HIBORMania

2017-10-01

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2017-10-01

HIBOR, Jun 2015 - Apr 2017
The Communist Chinese established their independence on September 21, 1949. The grand ceremony commemorating the political change was held in Tiananmen Square on October 1 that year. The following day, October 2, the Resolution on the National Day of the People’s Republic of China was passed making October 1to be China’s National holiday. It typically kicks off the second of China’s Golden Week holidays. The first relates to the Chinese New Year...

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It Was Collateral, Not That We Needed Any More Proof

2017-09-30

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2017-09-30

US Treasury, Jan - Sep 2017
Eleven days ago, we asked a question about Treasury bills and haircuts. Specifically, we wanted to know if the spike in the 4-week bill’s equivalent yield was enough to trigger haircut adjustments, and therefore disrupt the collateral chain downstream. Within two days of that move in bills, the GC market for UST 10s had gone insane.To be honest, it was a rhetorical exercise.

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The Real Estate View For A Second Lost Decade

2017-09-29

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2017-09-29

US Existing Home Sales, Jan 2011 - Jul 2017
The National Association of Realtor (NAR) reports today that sales of existing homes in the US were down 1.7% in August 2017 from July. At a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 5.35 million, that’s the lowest pace for resales since July 2016. It is yet another data point reflecting the almost certain end of “reflation” in the economic sense.

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Little Behind CNY

2017-09-28

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2017-09-28

PBOC Balance Sheet, Aug 2010 - 2017
The framing is a bit clumsy, but the latest data in favor of the artificial CNY surge comes to us from Bloomberg. The mainstream views currency flows as, well, flows of currency. That’s what makes their description so maladroit, and it can often lead to serious confusion. A little translation into the wholesale eurodollar reality, however, clears it up nicely.

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Why The Fed’s Balance Sheet Reduction Is As Irrelevant As Its Expansion

2017-09-27

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2017-09-27

Japan Monetary Base, Jan 2013 - 2017, US Versus Canada Real GDP, 2007 - 2017
The FOMC is widely expected to vote in favor of reducing the system’s balance sheet this week. The possibility has been called historic and momentous, though it may be for reasons that aren’t very kind to these central bankers. Having started to swell almost ten years ago, it’s a big deal only in that after so much time here they still are having these kinds of discussions.

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PBOC RMB Restraint Derives From Experience Plus ‘Dollar’ Constraint

2017-09-27

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2017-09-27

PBOC Balance Sheet, Aug 2006 - 2017
Given that today started with a review of the “dollar” globally as represented by TIC figures and how that is playing into China’s circumstances, it would only be fitting to end it with a more complete examination of those. We know that the eurodollar system is constraining Chinese monetary conditions, but all through this year the PBOC has approached that constraint very differently than last year.

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Bi-Weekly Economic Review: As Good As It Gets

2017-09-26

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2017-09-26

The incoming economic data hasn’t changed its tone all that much in the last several years. The US economy is growing but more slowly than it once did and we hope it does again. It is frustrating for economic bulls and bears, never fully satisfying either. Probably more important is the frustration of the average American, a dissatisfaction with the status quo that permeates the national debate. The housing bubble papered over the annoying lack of...

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Swimming The ‘Dollar’ Current (And Getting Nowhere)

2017-09-26

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2017-09-26

PBOC Balance Sheet, Aug 2011 - 2017
The People’s Bank of China reported this week that its holdings of foreign assets fell slightly again in August 2017. Down about RMB 21 billion, almost identical to the RMB 22 billion decline in July, the pace of forex withdrawals is clearly much preferable to what China’s central bank experienced (intentionally or not) late last year at ten and even twenty times the rate of July and August.

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Global Asset Allocation Update: Step Away From The Portfolio

2017-09-25

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2017-09-25

Moderate Allocation
There is no change to the risk budget this month. For the moderate risk investor, the allocation between risk assets and bonds is unchanged at 50/50. There are no changes to the portfolios this month. The post Fed meeting market reaction was a bit surprising in its intensity. The actions of the Fed were, to my mind anyway, pretty much as expected but apparently the algorithms that move markets today were singing from a different hymnal.

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Expectations and Acceptance of Potential

2017-09-23

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2017-09-23

University of Michigan Consumer Confidence, Jan 1997 - 2017
The University of Michigan reports that consumer confidence in September slipped a little from August. Their Index of Consumer Sentiment registered 95.3 in the latest month, down from 96.8 in the prior one. Both of those readings are in line with confidence estimates going back to early 2014 when consumer sentiment supposedly surged.

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IP Weathers Storms But Not Cars

2017-09-23

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2017-09-23

US Industrial Production, Jan 2010 - Jul 2017
In late August 2006, ABC News asked more than a dozen prominent economists to evaluate the impacts of hurricane Katrina on the US economy. The cataclysmic storm made landfall on August 29, 2005, devastating the city of New Orleans and the surrounding Gulf coast. The cost in human terms was unthinkable, and many were concerned, as people always are, that in economic terms the country might end up in similar devastation.

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Retail Sales and the End of ‘Reflation’

2017-09-22

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2017-09-22

US Retail Sales, Jun 2011 - Aug 2017
There will be an irresistible urge to the make this about the weather, but more and more data shows it’s not any singular instance. Nor is it transitory. What does prove to be temporary time and again is the upside. The economy gets hit (by “dollar” events), bounces back a little, and then goes right back into the dumps. This, it seems, is the limited extent of cyclicality in these times.

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The CPI Comes Home

2017-09-22

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2017-09-22

US Consumer Price Index, Jan 2016 - Aug 2017
There seems to be an intense if at times acrimonious debate raging inside the Federal Reserve right now. The differences go down to its very core philosophies. Just over a week ago, Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer abruptly resigned from the Board of Governors even though many believed he was a possible candidate to replace Chairman Yellen at the end of her term next year. His letter of resignation only cited “personal reasons.”

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A Clear Anchor

2017-09-21

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2017-09-21

China Fixed Asses Investment, 2014 - 2016
All the way back in January I calculated the total size of China’s 2016 fiscal “stimulus.” Starting in January 2016, authorities conducted what was an enormous spending program. As it had twice before, the government directed increased “investment” from State-owned Enterprises (SOE). By my back-of-the-envelope numbers, the scale of this fiscal side program was about RMB 1.45 trillion, or nearly 2% of GDP

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