Tag Archive: economy

Global Asset Allocation Update

2017-03-16

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. The Fed spent the last month forward guiding the market to the rate hike they implemented today. Interest rates, real and nominal, moved up in anticipation of a more aggressive Fed rate hiking cycle.

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China Starts 2017 With Chronic, Not Stable And Surely Not ‘Reflation’

2017-03-15

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-03-15

The first major economic data of 2017 from China was highly disappointing to expectations of either stability or hopes for actual acceleration. On all counts for the combined January-February period, the big three statistics missed: Industrial Production was 6.3%, Fixed Asset Investment 8.9%, and Retail Sales just 9.5%.

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Mugged By Reality; Many Still Yet To Be

2017-03-14

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-03-14

In August 2014, Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer admitted to an audience in Sweden the possibility in some unusually candid terms that maybe they (economists, not Sweden) didn’t know what they were doing. His speech was lost in the times, those being the middle of that year where the Fed having already started to taper QE3 and 4 were becoming supremely confident that they would soon end them.

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Bi-Weekly Economic Review

2017-03-13

by Joseph Y. Calhoun

2017-03-13

The Federal Reserve is widely expected to raise interest rates again at their meeting next week. They obviously view the recent cyclical upturn as being durable and the inflation data as pointing to the need for higher rates. Our market based indicators agree somewhat but nominal and real interest rates are still below their mid-December peaks so I don’t think a lot has changed.

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Do Record Debt And Loan Balances Matter? Not Even Slightly

2017-03-12

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-03-12

We live in a non-linear world that is almost always described in linear terms. Though Einstein supposedly said compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe, it rarely is appreciated for what the statement really means. And so the idea of record highs or even just positive numbers have been equated with positive outcomes, even though record highs and positive growth rates can be at times still associated with some of the worst. It...

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Payrolls Still Slowing Into A Third Year

2017-03-11

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-03-11

Today’s bland payroll report did little to suggest much of anything. All the various details were left pretty much where they were last month, and all the prior trends still standing. The headline Establishment Survey figure of 235k managed to bring the 6-month average up to 194k, almost exactly where it was in December but quite a bit less than November. In other words, despite what is mainly written as continued “strength” is still pointing down...

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Time, The Biggest Risk

2017-03-11

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-03-11

If there is still no current or present indication of rising economic fortunes, and there isn’t, then the “reflation” idea turns instead to what might be different this time as compared to the others. In 2013 and 2014, it was QE3 and particularly the intended effects (open ended and faster paced, a bigger commitment by the Fed to purportedly do whatever it took) upon expectations that supposedly set it apart from the failures of QE’s 1 and 2. This...

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No Paradox, Economy to Debt to Assets

2017-03-11

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-03-11

It is surely one of the primary reasons why many if not most people have so much trouble accepting the trouble the economy is in. With record high stock prices leading to record levels of household net worth, it seems utterly inconsistent to claim those facts against a US economic depression.

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Same Country, Different Worlds

2017-03-10

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-03-10

To my mind, “reflation” has always proceeded under false pretenses. This goes for more than just the latest version, as we witnessed the same incongruity in each of the prior three. The trend is grounded in mere hope more than rational analysis, largely because I think human nature demands it. We are conditioned to believe especially in the 21st century that the worst kinds of things are either unrealistic or apply to some far off location nowhere...

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US Trade Skews

2017-03-09

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-03-09

US trade statistics dramatically improved in January 2017, though questions remain as to interpreting by how much. On the export side, US exports of goods rose 8.7% year-over-year (NSA). While that was the highest growth rate since 2012, there is part symmetry to account for some of it.

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China And Reserves, A Straightforward Process Unnecessarily Made Into A Riddle

2017-03-08

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-03-08

China Official Foreign Exchange 2015-2017

The fact that China reported a small increase in official “reserves” for February 2017 is one of the least surprising results in all of finance. The gamma of those reserves is as predictable as the ticking clock of CNY, in no small part because what is behind the changes in those balances are the gears that lie behind face of the forex timepiece.

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Do Record Eurodollar Balances Matter? Not Even Slightly

2017-03-07

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-03-07

Nonbanks TIC Other Outbound, Nov 1978 - 2016

The BIS in its quarterly review published yesterday included a reference to the eurodollar market (thanks to M. Daya for pointing it out). The central bank to central banks, as the outfit is often called, is one of the few official institutions that have taken a more objective position with regard to the global money system. Of the very few who can identify eurodollars, or have even heard of them, the BIS while not fully on board is at least open...

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Manufacturing Back To 2014

2017-03-07

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-03-07

Factory Orders for All Manufacturing Industies, SA 1992-2016

The ISM Manufacturing PMI registered 57.7 in February 2017, the highest value since August 2014 (revised). It was just slightly less than that peak in the 2014 “reflation” cycle. Given these comparisons, economic narratives have been spun further than even the past few years where “strong” was anything but.

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Importance of Hiding Gold Creatively and Securely If Taking Delivery

2017-03-04

by Mark O'Byrne

2017-03-04

Why gold retains value? Interesting unknown gold facts. "Prepare your jaws for a sizeable drop!" History, finite, rare and peak gold. "It is beautiful to look at...". 'Heavy metal' - Thud sound of a gold bar (kilo). 'Going for gold' - Olympic gold medals to Chelthenham 'Gold Cup'.

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Economic Dissonance, Too

2017-03-04

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-03-04

Germany Industrial Production, SA 1997-2016

Germany is notoriously fickle when it comes to money, speaking as much of discipline in economy or industry as central banking. If ever there is disagreement about monetary arrangements, surely the Germans are behind it. Since ECB policy only ever attains the one direction, so-called accommodation, there never seems to be harmony.

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True Cognitive Dissonance

2017-03-04

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-03-04

There is gold in Asia, at least gold of the intellectual variety for anyone who wishes to see it. The Chinese offer us perhaps the purest view of monetary conditions globally, where RMB money markets are by design tied directly to “dollar” behavior. It is, in my view, enormously helpful to obsess over China’s monetary system so as to be able to infer a great deal about the global monetary system deep down beyond the “event horizon.”

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Real Disposable Income: Headwinds of the Negative

2017-03-03

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-03-03

The PCE Deflator for January 2017 rose just 1.89% year-over-year. It was the 57th consecutive month less than the 2% mandate (given by the Fed itself when in early 2012 it made the 2% target for this metric its official definition of price stability).

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Some Notes On GDP Past And Present

2017-03-01

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-03-01

GDP PCE Deflator QQ YY, January 2009 - April 2016

The second estimate for GDP was so similar to the first as to be in all likelihood statistically insignificant. The preliminary estimate for real GDP was given as $16,804.8 billion. The updated figure is now $16,804.1 billion. In nominal terms there was more variation, where the preliminary estimate of $18,860.8 billion is now replaced by one for $18,855.5 billion.

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Durable Goods Groundhog

2017-02-28

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-02-28

If the economy is repeating the after-effects of the latest “dollar” events, and it does seem more and more to be that case, then analysis starts with identifying a range for where it might be in the repetition. New orders for durable goods (ex transportation) rose 4.3% year-over-year in January 2017 (NSA, only 2.4% SA), the highest growth rate since September 2014 (though not meaningfully faster than the 3.9% rate in November 2016).

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It Was ‘Dollars’ All Along

2017-02-28

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-02-28

Ross Perot famously declared the “giant sucking sound” in the 1992 Presidential campaign. The debate over NAFTA did not end with George H. W. Bush’s defeat, as it simmered in one form or another for much of the 1990’s. Curiously, however, it seemed almost perfectly absent during the 2000’s, the very decade in which Perot’s prophecy came true. Americans didn’t notice because there was a bubble afoot.

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