Dead Cats Bouncing: Making Sense of the Markets
Dead Cats Bouncing: Making Sense of the Markets Recent Blog Posts
The Dollar Bear Trade is Dangerously Crowded...
on Oct 22, 2009A bearish frenzy has developed in the US dollar, and is probably the strongest consensus I've seen since the bullish stampede in oil futures crashed last Summer. With publicity hungry commentators from historian Niall Ferguson to journalists spinning...
Japan: Who will Switch the Lights Off?
on Oct 14, 2009I wrote several times in 2008 on Japan's secular economic decline, determined by the developed world's worst demographic outlook. Over the next 20 years, the workforce will decline by 20%. Five years ago, the population was 127.7 million, today it ma...
Australia Hikes Rates: Who's Next?
on Oct 8, 2009Don't expect to be crushed underfoot in the rush; while rate cuts were tightly co-ordinated to stem last year's systemic panic, their reversal will be piecemeal and grudging. The decision by the RBA to raise rates by 25bp, while hardly unexpected, un...
America as Argentina?
on Oct 1, 2009With Hilary Clinton as Eva Peron singing 'Don't cry for me Obama'? One of the most remarkable economic reversals over the last decade has been the impressive macroeconomic discipline shown by leading emerging markets from Brazil to India, while devel...
Deleveraging the Fed's Balance Sheet...
on Sep 24, 2009In recent days, it's being reported that the Fed is structuring a new securities reverse repo program with Wall Street money market funds, in the first practical sign of a policy 'exit strategy'. At some point soon, the Fed will be buying new securit...
Inflation or Deflation?
on Sep 16, 2009Early this year, I advocated building exposure to long-term inflation hedges such as TIPS and resource equities, because they were radically mispriced as investors fled in fear of a sustained deflationary environment. That strategy played out well, a...