Tag Archive: China

FX Daily, December 08: Brexit Talks Move to Stage II, While Greenback Remains Firm

2017-12-08

by

2017-12-08

Sufficient progress will be judged to have been made, and negotiations of the separation between the UK and EU will be allowed to enter the second stage. The formal decision will be made at next week's EU summit. To be sure, "sufficient progress," which the diplomatic-speak that does not mean that any agreement has really been reached, but rather that the UK has made a few concessionary signals.

Read More »

What Gives Cryptocurrencies Their Value

2017-12-05

by

2017-12-05

Number of Bitcoin Transactions
The value of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, just like any other kind of money, comes fundamentally from what you can do with it. As a follow up to What Backs Bitcoin, I want to dig into that value. The idea, which comes from Austrian economist Carl Menger, is that just as a shovel’s value comes from its ability to dig, a currency’s value comes from its ability to help you do two things: transactions and savings.

Read More »

For The First Time Ever, The “1 percent” Own More Than Half The World’s Wealth: The Stunning Chart

2017-11-21

by

2017-11-21

Today Credit Suisse released its latest annual global wealth report, which traditionally lays out what has become the single biggest reason for the recent "anti-establishment" revulsion: an unprecedented concentration of wealth among a handful of people, as shown in Swiss bank's infamous global wealth pyramid, an arrangement which as observed by the "shocking" political backlash of the past year, suggests that the lower 'levels' of the pyramid are...

Read More »

Deepening Crisis In Hyper-inflationary Venezuela and Zimbabwe Show Why Physical Gold Is Ultimate Protection

2017-11-18

by

2017-11-18

Zimbabwe Implied Annual Inflation, Aug 2015 - Oct 2017
Deepening Crisis In Hyper-inflationary Venezuela and Zimbabwe. Real inflation in Zimbabwe is 313 percent annually and 112 percent on a monthly basis. Venezuela's new 100,000-bolivar note is worth less oday thehan USD 2.50. Maduro announces plans to eliminate all physical cash. Gold rises in response to ongoing crises.

Read More »

Globally Synchronized Downside Risks

2017-11-17

by

2017-11-17

Markets and Economy. March 2012 - 2017
Oil prices were riding high after several weeks of steady, significant gains. It’s never really clear what it is that might actually move markets in the short run, whether for crude it was Saudi Arabia’s escalating activities or other geopolitical concerns. Behind those, the idea of “globally synchronized growth” that is supposedly occurring for the first time since before the Great “Recession” while it may not have pushed oil investors to buy...

Read More »

China Gold Import Jan-Sep 777t. Who’s Supplying?

2017-11-14

by

2017-11-14

Gold Supply and Demand Data, 2013 - Q3 2017
While the gold price is slowly crawling upward in the shadow of the current cryptocurrency boom, China continues to import huge tonnages of yellow metal. As usual, Chinese investors bought on the price dips in the past quarters, steadfastly accumulating for a rainy day.

Read More »

Synchronized Global Not Quite Growth

2017-11-10

by

2017-11-10

US Exports, Jan 1989 - 2017
Going back to 2014, it was common for whenever whatever economic data point disappointed that whomever optimistic economist or policymaker would overrule it by pointing to “global growth.” It was the equivalent of shutting down an uncomfortable debate with ad hominem attacks. You can’t falsify “global growth” because you can’t really define what it is.

Read More »

Each Bitcoin Transaction Uses As Much Energy As Your House In A Week

2017-11-07

by

2017-11-07

Bitcoin
While Bitcoin bulls will probably never have it so good as they have in 2017, we wonder whether many of them have stopped to think about the environmental downside of this roaring bull market. After all, back in the dot.com boom, people had ideas about potential internet businesses, issued pieces of paper representing ownership and watched their prices go parabolic parabolic.

Read More »

Bonds And Soft Chinese Data

2017-11-04

by

2017-11-04

China Treasury Bonds
Back in June, China’s federal bond yield curve inverted. Ahead of mid-year bank checks, short-term govvies sold off as longer bonds continued to be bought. It was for some a rotation, for others a reflection of money rates threatening to spiral out of control. On June 19, for example, the 6-month federal security yielded 3.87% compared to a yield of 3.525% for the 10-year.

Read More »

An Unexpected (And Rotten) Branch of the Maestro’s Legacy

2017-10-29

by

2017-10-29

China Fixed Asset Investment, March 1998 - Sep 2017
The most significant part of China’s 19th Party Congress ended in the usual anticlimactic fashion. These events are for show, not debate. Like any good trial lawyer will tell you, you never ask a question in court that you don’t already know the answer to. For China’s Communists, that meant nominating Xi Jinping’s name to be written into the Communist constitution with the votes already tallied.

Read More »

The World’s Largest ICO Is Imploding After Just 3 Months

2017-10-26

by

2017-10-26

Tezos Change for October 2017
Earlier this summer, Tezos smashed existing sales records in the white-hot IPO market after the company’s pitch to build a better blockchain for cryptocurrencies made it one of the buzziest ICOs in the world. As we noted at the time, the company capitalized on that buzz by courting VC firms and other institutional investors with a $50 million token pre-sale. After the company opened up selling to the broader public, demand soared as investors...

Read More »

A Look Inside The Secret Swiss Bunker Where The Ultra Rich Hide Their Bitcoins

2017-10-25

by

2017-10-25

Xapo Vault
Somewhere in the mountains near Switzerland’s Lake Lucerne lies a hidden underground vault containing a vast fortune. It’s no ordinary vault, according to Quartz. Built inside a decommissioned Swiss military bunker dug into a granite mountain, it’s precise location is a closely guarded secret, and access is limited by myriad security precautions.

Read More »

Global Inflation Continues To Underwhelm

2017-10-19

by

2017-10-19

Another Side of China, Aug 2016 - Oct 2017
Chinese producer prices accelerated in September 2017, while consumer price increases slowed. The National Bureau of Statistics reported this weekend that China’s PPI was up 6.9% year-over-year, a quicker pace than the 6.3% estimated for August and a 5.5% rate in July. Earlier in the year producer prices were driven mostly by 2016’s oil rebound, along with those in the rest of the global economy, but in recent months there has been more influence...

Read More »

China Exports/Imports: Enforcing A Global Speed Limit

2017-10-18

by

2017-10-18

China Imports, Jan 2008 - Jul 2017
Chinese imports rose 18.7% in September 2017 year-over-year. That’s up from 13.5% growth in August. While near-20% expansion sounds good if not exhilarating, it isn’t materially different from 13.5% or 8% for that matter. In addition, Chinese trade statistics tend to vary month to month.

Read More »

Neck and Neck: Russian and Chinese Official Gold Reserves

2017-10-17

by

2017-10-17

Russian Central Bank Gold Reserves, 1994 - 2016
Official gold reserve updates from the Russian and Chinese central banks are probably one of the more closely watched metrics in the gold world. After the US, Germany, Italy and France, the sovereign gold holdings of China and Russia are the world’s 5th and 6th largest. And with the gold reserves ‘official figures’ of the US, Germany, Italy and France being essentially static, the only numbers worth watching are those of China and Russia.

Read More »

Noisy PMI’s In China

2017-10-14

by

2017-10-14

China Manufacturing PMI, March 2007 - Sep 2017
In the US our economic data for a few months at least will be on shaky ground due to the lingering economic impacts of severe hurricanes. In China, the potential for irregularity is perhaps as great, though it has nothing to do with the weather. In a little over a week, Communist Party officials will gather for their 19th Party Congress.

Read More »

Dollar Surge Continues Ahead Of Jobs Report; Europe Dips As Catalan Fears Return

2017-10-07

by

2017-10-07

CBOE VIX Gauge, 1990 - 2019
World stocks eased back from record highs and fell for the first time in eight days, as jitters about Catalonia’s independence push returned while bets on higher U.S. interest rates sent the dollar to its highest since mid August; S&P 500 futures were modestly in the red - as they have been every day this week before levitating to record highs - ahead of hurricane-distorted nonfarm payrolls data (full preview here). U.S. jobs report will also be...

Read More »

Hard Assets In An Age Of Negative Interest Rates

2017-10-04

by

2017-10-04

Time is the soul of money, the long-view - its immortality. Hard assets are forever, even when destroyed by the cataclysms of history. It is the outlook that perpetuated the most competent and powerful aristocracies in continental Europe, well up through World War I and, in certain prominent cases, beyond; it is the mindset that has sustained the most fiscally serious democratic republic in the Western world, that of Switzerland.

Read More »

“This Is A Crisis Greater Than Any Government Can Handle”: The $400 Trillion Global Retirement Gap

2017-10-03

by

2017-10-03

Size of the retirement savings gap, 2015 - 2050
Today we’ll continue to size up the bull market in governmental promises. As we do so, keep an old trader’s slogan in mind: “That which cannot go on forever, won’t.” Or we could say it differently: An unsustainable trend must eventually stop. Lately I have focused on the trend in US public pension funds, many of which are woefully underfunded and will never be able to pay workers the promised benefits, at least without dumping a huge and unwelcome...

Read More »

Not Political Risk For China, But Unwelcome Reality

2017-10-01

by

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.

Read More »