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Category Archive: 5) Global Macro

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Will Skilled Hands-On Labor Finally Become More Valuable?

2020-08-23

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2020-08-23

The sands beneath what's scarce and what's over-abundant are shifting. On a recent visit to the welding shop where my niece's husband works, I asked him if they had enough welders for their workload.

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Monthly Macro Monitor – August 2020

2020-08-22

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2020-08-22

One of the advantages we enjoy here at Alhambra is the opportunity to interact with a lot of investors. We talk to hundreds of individual investors on a monthly basis, giving us a front-row seat to everyone’s fear and greed. Economic data tells us about the past, which isn’t particularly useful for investors focused on the future.

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Part 2 of June TIC: The Dollar Why

2020-08-21

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2020-08-21

Federal Reserve: H.10 Foreign Exchange Rates, 2008-2020
Before getting into the why of the dollar’s stubbornly high exchange value in the face of so much “money printing”, we need to first go back and undertake a decent enough review of the guts maybe even the central focus of the global (euro)dollar system.

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Our Systemic Drift to Collapse

2020-08-21

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2020-08-21

How systems collapse
Thus do the lazy complacent passengers drift inexorably toward the cataracts of collapse just ahead. The boat ride down to the waterfall of systemic collapse is not dramatic, it's lazy drifting: a lazy complacency that doing more of what worked in the past will work again, and an equally lazy disregard for how far the system has drifted from the point when things actually worked.

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Where Has All the Carry Gone?

2020-08-21

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2020-08-21

Greater China EM Carry, 2000-2020
Despite broad-based dollar weakness, EM currencies have not fully participated in the risk on environment that’s now in place. The good news is that fundamentals matter again. The bad news is that there are a lot of EM countries with bad fundamentals, and the secular decline in carry no longer gives these weaklings any cover.

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Part 1 of June TIC: The Dollar What

2020-08-20

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2020-08-20

ICE: US Index Futures DX1, 2017-2020
While the world is taking the smallest of baby steps in the right direction, mostly it’s been related to the part of the eurodollar system that everyone can see. Not bank reserves and the Fed’s “money printing”, though you can see them and we’re told to obsess about them those things don’t matter.

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The Empire Will Strike Back: Dollar Supremacy Is the Fed’s Imperial Mandate

2020-08-19

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2020-08-19

Triffin's Paradox demands painful trade-offs to issue a reserve currency, and it demands the issuing central bank serve two competing audiences and markets. Judging by the headlines and pundit chatter, the U.S. dollar is about to slide directly to zero. This sense of certitude is interesting, given that no empire prospered by devaluing its currency. 

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Here’s Why the “Impossible” Economic Collapse Is Unavoidable

2020-08-18

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2020-08-18

The Rising Wedge Model of Breakdown
This is why denormalization is an extinction event for much of our high-cost, high-complexity, heavily regulated economy. A collapse of major chunks of the economy is widely viewed as "impossible" because the federal government can borrow and spend unlimited amounts of money because the Federal Reserve can create unlimited amounts of money: the government borrows $1 trillion by selling $1 trillion in Treasury bonds, the Fed prints $1 trillion...

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It Was Bad In The Other Sense, So Now What?

2020-08-18

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2020-08-18

Japan Real GDP, 2008-2020
According to the latest figures, Japan has tallied 56,074 total coronavirus cases since the outbreak began, leading to the death of an estimated 1,103 Japanese citizens. Out of a total population north of 125 million, it’s hugely incongruous.

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It’s Do-or-Die, Deep State: Either Strangle the Stock Market Rally Now or Cede the Election to Trump

2020-08-17

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2020-08-17

With only 56 trading days and fewer than 80 calendar days to the election, the Deep State camps seeking to torpedo Trump's re-election have reached the do-or-die point. Back in June I speculated that the only way the Deep State could deep-six Trump's re-election was to sink the stock market rally, which the president has long touted as evidence of his economic leadership.

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Fama 2: No Inflation For Old Central Banks

2020-08-14

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2020-08-14

CPI less Food & Energy, 1983-2020
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the core CPI in July 2020 jumped by the most (+0.62%) in almost thirty years. After having dropped month-over-month for three months in a row for the first time in its history, it has posted back to back gains the latest of which pushing the index back above its February level.

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Eugene Fama’s Efficient View of Stimulus Porn

2020-08-13

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2020-08-13

The Real GDP Problem, 1988-2018
The key word in the whole thing is “bias.” For a very long time, people working in and around the finance industry have sought to gain tremendous advantages. No explanation for the motive is required. Charts, waves, technical (sounding) analysis and so on.

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Dollar Softens, Equities Rise as Markets Ignore the Negatives

2020-08-12

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2020-08-12

Real Yields and Gold, 2018-2020
Markets seem to be increasingly desensitized to the usual negative drivers; the dollar is under pressure again. Stimulus talks remain stalled; reports suggest Trump is mulling a capital gains tax cut of some sort. US data highlight today will be July PPI; US Treasury begins its record $112 bln quarterly refunding.

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Science of Sentiment: Zooming Expectations Wonder

2020-08-12

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2020-08-12

It had been an unusually heated gathering, one marked by temper tantrums and often publicly expressed rancor. Slamming tables, undiplomatic rudeness. Europe’s leaders had been brought together by the uncomfortable even dangerous fact that the economic dislocation they’ve put their countries through is going to sustain enormously negative pressures all throughout them. What would a “united” European system do to try and fill in this massive hole?The...

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SPECIAL REPORT: Follow The Money – Volume 5

2020-08-11

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2020-08-11

If the recession was the first “shoe to drop”, what’s the second…or third? The shock of the self-inflicted COVID recession is behind us. What we’re all wondering now is what comes next? Will the economy recover to its previous state? Something better? Something worse? That will be determined by the second and third-order effects and they are already starting.

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A Second JOLTS

2020-08-11

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2020-08-11

What happens when we are stunned and dazed? We filter out the noise to focus on the bare basics by getting back to our instincts, acting reflexively based upon our deeply held beliefs and especially training. When faced with a crisis and there’s no time to really think, shorthand will have to suffice.

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The Economy Is Mortally Wounded

2020-08-10

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2020-08-10

A fully financialized, totally debt and speculation-dependent economy is terminal once leverage and debt stop expanding exponentially. We all know the movie scene in which the character is wounded but dismisses it as no big deal, and then lurches into the closing sequence where we discover the wound was not inconsequential, it was mortal, and the character expires.

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EM Preview for the Week Ahead

2020-08-10

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2020-08-10

The dollar got some traction against the majors towards the end of last week. This weighed on EM FX, with the high best currencies TRY, BRL, CLP, and ZAR leading the losers. We downplay risk of contagion from Turkey, but we acknowledge it will keep investors wary of the countries with poor fundamentals.

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If the “Market” Never Goes Down, The System Is Doomed

2020-08-09

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2020-08-09

Bear Market Cartoon
"Markets" that never go down aren't markets, they're signaling mechanisms of the Powers That Be. Markets are fundamentally clearing houses of information on price, demand, sentiment, expectations and so on--factual data on supply and demand, shipping costs, cost of credit, etc.--and reflections of trader and consumer emotions and psychology.

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Shoe V arning

2020-08-08

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2020-08-08

US Trade in Goods, Jan 2010 - Jul 2020
It’s no wonder we’re obsessed with shoes these days. Even the V-people, as I’ll call them, keep one wary eye glued looking behind them. Survivor’s euphoria means a lot of potentially bad things, only beginning with a false sense of survivor-hood.

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