Comment Today at 9 AM CT (10 AM ET, 7 AM PT and 15:00 BST) Bianco Research, in conjunction with Arbor Research & Trading, will be hosting a webcast/teleconference moderated by Jim Bianco. Soft, survey-based data has diverged from hard, realized data. Join us Thursday as we discuss this divide in attempt to determine which… Continue reading The Growing Divide Between Survey-Based Data And Realized Data
FOX Business – Tax Reform by Year End will be ‘Challenging,’ Goldman Warns Tax reform, a highly-anticipated pillar of President Donald Trump’s policy agenda, will be “challenging” to accomplish before the end of the year, Goldman Sachs (GS) said Wednesday morning, delivering the latest blow to the post-election “Trump trade” that has powered Wall Street higher… Continue reading Tax Reform Worries Impacting High Tax Equities
Financial Times – China lifts renminbi capital controls as outflows pressure eases China has scrapped a restriction on cross-border capital movement imposed in January, in what is believed to be the first concrete move to loosen capital controls since authorities began imposing curbs designed to shield the renminbi from downward pressure last year. The People’s… Continue reading China Easing its Grip
MacroMania (St. Louis Fed VP David Andolfatto’s Blog) – The St. Louis Fed’s Macroeconomic Outlook Bullard is suggesting that it might be a good time to think about reducing the size of the Fed’s balance sheet. He notes that recent FOMC policy is putting upward pressure at the short end of the yield curve (via… Continue reading Shrinking The Balance Sheet
Bloomberg.com – ETFs Create Stock Markets That Are Both Mindless and Too Expensive, Study Says Exchange-traded funds are making stock markets dumber — and more expensive. That’s the finding of researchers at Stanford University, Emory University and the Interdisciplinary Center of Herzliya in Israel. They’ve uncovered evidence that higher ownership of individual stocks by ETFs… Continue reading The Downside Of ETFs
Bloomberg Gadfly – Lisa Abramowicz: Long, Long Bonds and Even Longer Odds The Treasury Department released a questionnaire to primary dealers on Friday, asking for detailed responses about their appetite for 40, 50 or 100-year bonds, as Bloomberg’s Alex Harris reported on Tuesday. While this isn’t the first time that the agency has floated the idea… Continue reading More On Ultra-Long Debt Issuance
MarketWatch – Caroline Baum: What gives? Sentiment is through the roof, but sales are in the basement The gap between hard and soft data — between actual economic statistics, flawed as they may be, and surveys — has been widely noted. Some of the discrepancies are easy to explain; others not. For example, the monthly… Continue reading More On Sentiment vs. Actual Data
Bloomberg Business – Mohamed A. El-Erian: High Stock Prices and Low Bond Yields Can’t Last Unless you believe the Federal Reserve will ease monetary policy, which I don’t, it is getting harder to reconcile what are still historically low bond yields and relatively high stock prices. More consistent and sustainable levels probably lie somewhere in the… Continue reading Low Yields vs. High Stock Prices
Bloomberg Business – Government Shutdown Is Logical But Not Likely All the elements of a debacle will be in place next week when congressional authorization expires for financing the U.S. government. Lawmakers, on recess now, will have only four days to iron out a deal. Right-wing Republicans see a chance to enact abortion curbs and anti-immigrant… Continue reading The Debt Ceiling Approaches
Bloomberg.com – China’s Stocks Refuse to Drop More Than 1% In a Chinese stock market where superstition and government intervention often count for more than economic fundamentals, unusual trading patterns are par for the course. But even by China’s standards, the latest market anomaly to grab the attention of local investors stands out. The Shanghai… Continue reading China’s Plunge Protection Team Hard At Work?
The Financial Times – IMF says debt binge leaves US corporate assets exposed A debt binge has left a quarter of US corporate assets vulnerable to a sudden increase in interest rates with the ability of companies to cover interest payments at its weakest since the 2008 financial crisis by one measure, the International Monetary… Continue reading Companies Piling On The Debt
Bloomberg Business – Larry Fink: ‘Warning Signs Are Getting Darker’ for the U.S. Economy U.S. market may fall 5%-10% on weak profits, Trump setbacks Laurence D. Fink, chief executive officer of BlackRock Inc., said the lackluster growth of the U.S. economy and uncertainty around the Trump administration’s ability to quickly pass key reforms pose a risk… Continue reading Larry Fink Gets Bearish