Tag Archive: Bonds

Six Point Nine Times Two Equals What It Had In Twenty Fourteen

2020-11-17

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2020-11-17

China Industrial Production, 1999-2020
It was a shock, total disbelief given how everyone, and I mean everyone, had penciled China in as the world’s go-to growth engine. If the global economy was ever going to get off the ground again following GFC1 more than a half a decade before, the Chinese had to get back to their precrisis “normal.”

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Counting The Corroborated Stall, Not The Coming Lawfare Election Mess

2020-11-06

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2020-11-06

CPS Household Survey, 2003-2020
While we wait for the electoral count to be sorted out by what we hope are competent and honest people (not holding our breath), there’s a greater muddle growing where it actually counts and where it’s never fully nor properly accounted. By a large and growing number of accounts, the US economy’s rebound seems to have stalled out back around June or July, an inflection unrelated to COVID case counts, too.

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Meanwhile, Outside Today’s DC

2020-11-05

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2020-11-05

German Economy, 2012-2020
With all eyes on Washington DC, today, everyone should instead be focused on Europe. As we’ve written for nearly three years now, for nearly three years Europe has been at the unfortunate forefront of Euro$ #4. We could argue about whether coming out of GFC2 back in March pushed everything into a Reflation #4 – possible – or if this is still just one three-yearlong squeeze of a global dollar shortage.

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What’s Going On, And Why Late August?

2020-10-29

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2020-10-29

ICE: US$ Index Futures, DX1
This isn’t about COVID. It’s been building since the end of August, a shift in mood, perception, and reality that began turning things several months before even then. With markets fickle yet again, a lot today, what’s going on here?

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Who’s Negative? The Marginal American Worker

2020-10-06

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2020-10-06

CPS Household Survey: Civilian Labor Force Level, 2007-2020
The BLS’s payroll report draws most of the mainstream attention, with the exception of the unemployment rate (especially these days). The government designates the former as the Current Employment Statistics (CES) series, and it intends to measure factors like payrolls (obviously), wages, and earnings from the perspective of the employers, or establishments.

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Monthly Macro Monitor – September (VIDEO)

2020-10-03

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2020-10-03

Alhambra CEO Joe Calhoun and Alhambra's Bob Williams look at data from the past month and discuss what it means for the economy.

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Why Aren’t Bond Yields Flyin’ Upward? Bidin’ Bond Time Trumps Jay

2020-10-02

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2020-10-02

It’s always something. There’s forever some mystery factor standing in the way. On the topic of inflation, for years it was one “transitory” issue after another. The media, on behalf of the central bankers it holds up as a technocratic ideal, would report these at face value. The more obvious explanation, the argument with all the evidence, just couldn’t be true otherwise it’d collapse the technocracy right down to the ground.And so it was also in...

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Monthly Macro Monitor – September 2020

2020-09-30

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2020-09-30

US Industrial Production Index
The economic data over the last month continued to improve but the breadth of improvement has narrowed. Additionally, while most of the economic data series are still improving, the rate of change, as Jeff pointed out recently, has slowed. I guess that isn’t that surprising as the initial phase of the recovery comes to an end.

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Uh Oh, The Dollar Has Caught A Bid

2020-09-24

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2020-09-24

Trade Weighted U.S. Dollar Index, 2007-2020
Anyone who follows Alhambra knows that we keep an eye on the dollar. It is a very important part of our process of identifying the economic environment. A rising dollar, when combined with a falling rate of growth, can be a lethal combination. That was the situation in March and of course during the financial crisis of 2008.

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If Dollar Is Fixed By Jay’s Flood, Why So Many TIC-ked At Corporates in July?

2020-09-21

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2020-09-21

When the eurodollar system worked, or at least appeared to, not only did the overflow of real effective (if virtual and confusing) currency “weaken” the US dollar’s exchange value, its enormous excess showed up as more and more foreign holdings of US$ assets.

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Reopening Inertia, Asian Dollar Style (Still Waiting On The Crash)

2020-09-20

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2020-09-20

Why are there still outstanding dollar swap balances? It is the middle of September, for cryin’ out loud, and the Federal Reserve reports $52.3 billion remains on its books as of yesterday.

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Re-recession Not Required

2020-09-12

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2020-09-12

Japan Economy, 2013-2020
If we are going to see negative nominal Treasury rates, what would guide yields toward such a plunge? It seems like a recession is the ticket, the only way would have to be a major economic downturn. Since we’ve already experienced one in 2020, a big one no less, and are already on our way back up to recovery (some say), then have we seen the lows in rates?Not for nothing, every couple years when we do those (record low yields) that’s what “they”...

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Bottleneck In Japanese

2020-09-09

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2020-09-09

US / Japan, 2018-2020
Japan’s yen is backward, at least so far as its trading direction may be concerned. This is all the more confusing especially over the past few months when this rising yen has actually been aiding the dollar crash narrative while in reality moving the opposite way from how the dollar system would be behaving if it was really happening.

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Monthly Market Monitor – August 2020

2020-09-08

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2020-09-08

Russell 3000 Value/Growth
Many of the weak dollar trends I noted in June’s update have moderated – even as the dollar has weakened further. US stocks surged over the last month, with growth indices leaving their value counterparts in the dust…again.

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Eurodollar University’s Making Sense; Episode 24, Part 2: Peering Behind The (Unemployment Rate) Curtain

2020-09-06

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2020-09-06

———WHERE——— AlhambraTube: https://bit.ly/2Xp3roy Apple: https://apple.co/3czMcWN iHeart: https://ihr.fm/31jq7cI Castro: https://bit.ly/30DMYza TuneIn: http://tun.in/pjT2Z Google: https://bit.ly/3e2Z48M Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3arP8mY Castbox: https://bit.ly/3fJR5xQ Breaker: https://bit.ly/2CpHAFO Podbean: https://bit.ly/2QpaDgh Stitcher: https://bit.ly/2C1M1GB Overcast: https://bit.ly/2YyDsLa SoundCloud: https://bit.ly/3l0yFfK...

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Powell Would Ask For His Money Back, If The Fed Did Money

2020-09-05

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2020-09-05

UST Yield Curve, 2020
Since the unnecessary destruction brought about by GFC2 in March 2020, there have been two detectable, short run trendline upward moves in nominal Treasury yields. Both were predictably classified across the entire financial media as the guaranteed first steps toward the “inevitable” BOND ROUT!!!!

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This Has To Be A Joke, Because If It’s Not…

2020-08-28

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2020-08-28

US Treasury and Auction Rates, Oct 2018 Aug 2020
After thinking about it all day, I’m still not quite sure this isn’t a joke; a high-brow commitment of utterly brilliant performance art, the kind of Four-D masterpiece of hilarious deception that Andy Kaufman would’ve gone nuts over. I mean, it has to be, right?I’m talking, of course, about Jackson Hole and Jay Powell’s reportedly genius masterstroke.

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Not This Again: Too Many Treasuries?

2020-08-27

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2020-08-27

US Banking Data, 1978 - 2020
Tomorrow, the Treasury Department is going to announce the results of its latest bond auction. A truly massive one, $47 billion are being offered of CAH4’s notes dated August 31, 2020, maturing out in August 31, 2027. In other words, the belly of the belly, the 7s.We’ve already seen them drop for two note auctions this week, both equally sizable.

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Monthly Macro Monitor – August 2020 (VIDEO)

2020-08-26

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2020-08-26

Monthly Macro Monitor August 2020
Monthly macro monitor review of August 2020 with Bob Williams and Joe Calhoun.

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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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