The Financial Times – Record outflows from US junk bond funds Investors have pulled a record amount out of US junk bond funds in the past week, beating a speedy retreat from what has been one of the hottest areas of the fixed income market in the past year. US high-yield funds saw a record… Continue reading High Yield Funds See Record Outflows
Bloomberg Businessweek – Austerity Principles, or How to Save an Economy in Crisis Since the 2008 financial crisis, governments have experimented with just about every possible combination of fiscal and monetary policy. Some have pursued expansionary programs by borrowing heavily, cutting taxes and increasing spending. Others have gone the sackcloth-and-ashes route — or were forced… Continue reading Saving The Economy
Project Syndicate – Quantitative Quicksand Almost all recoveries from recession have included rapid employment growth – until now. Though advanced-country central banks have pursued expansionary monetary policy in the wake of the global economic crisis in an effort to boost demand, job creation has lagged. As a result, workers, increasingly convinced that they will be… Continue reading Central Bank Policy
Bloomberg Businessweek – How the Robots Lost: High-Frequency Trading’s Rise and Fall By 2010, HFT accounted for more than 60 percent of all U.S. equity volume and seemed positioned to swallow the rest. Swanson, tired of Citi’s bureaucracy, left, and in mid-2011 opened his own HFT firm. The private equity firm Technology Crossover Ventures gave… Continue reading The Fall Of The Machines
Nanex.net – 07-Jun-2013 ~ 1 Billion SPY Option Quotes Obviously, no one at the SEC is paying attention. There should be an immediate review of recently proposed or added (10 share contracts) option contract types. In addition, a moratorium on new option’s exchanges until this alarming explosion of unwanted quote spam is addressed. <Click on… Continue reading SPY Options Have A Crazy Day
Real Time Economics (WSJ Blog) – Higher Mortgage Rates Won’t Kill Housing Recovery Mortgage rates are back above 4% for the first time in a year, but the rate rise probably isn’t going to be enough to take the wind out of the sails of the housing market rebound…What does it all mean for the… Continue reading Mortgage Rates Edge Higher
<Click on chart for larger image> MoneyBeat (WSJ Blog) – Little Mystery in Easy-Money Addiction The big question worrying investors today is how markets will react when the Federal Reserve starts trimming its stimulus program, something that could happen as soon as this year. The answer may not be that hard to figure out. The… Continue reading Addicted To Easy Money
The Wall Street Journal – The Hidden Jobless Disaster The market tanked Wednesday on bad preliminary job news. And so, when Friday’s jobs report is released, the unemployment rate and the number of new jobs will come in for close scrutiny. Then again, they always attract the most attention. Even the Federal Reserve focuses on… Continue reading Measuring Employment
Associated Press – AP survey: Economists see no stock market bubble A nervous debate is raging among investors and analysts: Has the Federal Reserve inflated a stock market bubble by driving interest rates to record lows? The answer, according to economists surveyed by The Associated Press: No. Three-quarters of the economists say stocks, which are… Continue reading Bubble? What Bubble?
The Wall Street Journal – Jobs Report May Be Kryptonite for Fed The thinking goes like this: With the Federal Reserve debating when to begin the dreaded “taper”—the point at which it slows its buying of Treasury and mortgage securities—poor news on employment will keep the printing presses rolling for longer. That, in turn, underpins… Continue reading When Good News Is Bad News
WashingtonsBlog.com – The REAL Reason Housing Prices Have Skyrocketed How Another Housing Bubble Was Blown … And Why Preface: In Part 1, we showed that mortgage applications are down, and it is really institutional investors driving the housing boom. Part 2 explains why. Housing prices have boomed because: (1) Lenders are artificially keeping vacant houses… Continue reading Hyperventilating Over Housing