Bloomberg.com – No Room at the Bin for Grain Amid Buffett’s BNSF Rail Jam With the start of the spring-wheat harvest in Arnegard, North Dakota, a week away, the bins on Bob Wisness’s 11,000-acre farm are half full with last year’s crops that have been stranded by a train traffic jam. “With the railroad situation… Continue reading Transporting Oil By Rail Affecting Grain Delivery
Bloomberg.com – Investors Pay for Hedge-Fund Illusions Sharpe ratios are the most common way that we measure the performance of a fund or other investment. Under some conditions, they are the best measurement of the tradeoff between risk and return. But when you throw options into the mix, Sharpe ratios suddenly have some issues. In… Continue reading Options Lead To Negative Skew In Hedge Fund Returns
The Wall Street Journal – Euro-Zone GDP Fails to Grow in Second Quarter The euro-zone economy stalled last quarter after 12 months of weak growth, underscoring concerns that the region is mired in a deep rut of high joblessness and weak consumer prices that could worsen amid tension in Ukraine and the Middle East. Gross… Continue reading No Growth In Europe
MoneyBeat (WSJ Blog) – 50 Financial Twitter Feeds You Must Follow The discussion of finance on Twitter is sounding more mature these days. Once simply a swirling pot of news, on-the-fly analysis, ridiculous market rumors and general snark, the social media site is now home to some of the fastest sophisticated analysis available on the… Continue reading Curating Your Twitter Feed
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Conference Call Presentation/Charts of the Week Audio [audio:https://www.biancoresearch.com/bianco/SubscriberArea/081414.mp3|titles=Conference Call ] Topics Covered This Week Include: Mid-Term Elections – Senate Polling Mid-Term Elections – Senate Betting Senate – Nate Silver Mid-Term Election – House Mid-Term Elections – Governors Geopolitics – When Did Sanctions Matter? Geopolitics – “Minimal Impact” Geopolitical Indices – Crude Oil and Gold How… Continue reading Conference Call Presentation/Charts of the Week
Comment On August 14, 2014 at 9 AM CT (10:00 AM ET, 7:00 AM PT, and 15:00 BST), Bianco Research, in conjunction with Arbor Research & Trading, will be hosting a webcast/teleconference moderated by Jim Bianco. Join us Thursday as we discuss: Fed Policy: The Fed wants to end asset purchases ASAP because it is… Continue reading Big Picture Themes
The New York Post – John Crudele: 61 data-collecting laptops misplaced in 2012 Just two months before the last presidential election, the Census Bureau’s Philadelphia office lost track of 61 laptops used by its workers to record unemployment and inflation data, The Post has learned. More than 120 laptops had been missing, but after Census… Continue reading Making Up The Unemployment Rate
The Wall Street Journal – Banks Retreat From Market That Keeps Cash Flowing New Regulations Bring Turmoil to Multitrillion-Dollar ‘Repo’ Market A critical part of the plumbing that keeps money flowing through the financial system is experiencing turmoil as new regulations prompt banks to step back from the multitrillion-dollar “repo” market. The large and opaque… Continue reading Bank Regulation And The Repo Market
Reuters – Yellen resolved to avoid raising rates too soon, fearing downturn Approaching a historic turn in U.S. monetary policy, Janet Yellen has staked her tenure as chair of the Federal Reserve on a simple principle: she’d rather fight inflation than another economic downturn. Interviews with current and former Fed officials indicate that Yellen and… Continue reading Yellen Puff Piece
Bloomberg.com – Statistics Canada Found Error in Last Week’s Labor Report Statistics Canada will re-release July’s employment report on Aug. 15 after saying it found an error in last week’s data. The Ottawa-based agency didn’t outline the cause of the “processing” error in a statement it sent by e-mail today. The original report, published Aug.… Continue reading Canada Takes A Mulligan On Its Jobs Number
Tumblr – The Bottom Line by Carl Icahn Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen recently commented on our Monetary Policy at the International Monetary Fund saying, “Monetary policy faces significant limitations as a tool to promote financial stability.” She continued that, “Its effects on financial vulnerabilities, such as excessive leverage and maturity transformation, are not well… Continue reading Bubble Talk From Places You Would Not Expect