The Financial Times – Chris Giles: 2018: the year of fake economic data Unreliable statistics are giving official number crunchers a bad name f 2017 was the year of fake news, 2018 is shaping up to be one of fake data. And just as fake news comes in many varieties — real news dubbed by… Continue reading Fake Data?
Bloomberg.com – The Stock Market Never Goes Down Anymore S&P is at widest level to its 200-day moving average since ’13 S&P trades at 3.4 times its book value, the most since 2002 he New Year’s rally has pushed the S&P 500 Index to its best start since the administration of George W. Bush. Now it’s… Continue reading Will The Stock Market Ever Go Down Again?
The handout, audio replay and webinar replay of our January 11, 2018 conference call titled Inflation, the Yield Curve and Earnings are below. The handout can be found here (starts with the second post). The audio replay can be heard below: The webinar replay is below:
China is more dependent on its trading relationship with the US than the US is on China.
Summary Financial markets are pricing in nearly the highest number of hikes across major central banks since 2011. The path of central bank balance sheets will mean more to the velocity of fund flows and direction of more long-term sovereign yields. Comment Financial markets are pricing in a total of 9.3 hikes in 2018 across… Continue reading Balance Sheet Expectations, Not Hikes, Dictate the Velocity of Fund Flows
Bloomberg – Energy Junk Bonds Near Record as Oil Price Turbocharges Rally Bloomberg Barclays high-yield index erases 3 years of losses The Bloomberg Barclays High Yield Energy Total Return Index is approaching a record high as a global rally in speculative-grade debt gets turbocharged by surging oil prices, and a weak U.S. dollar continues to boost… Continue reading High Yield Energy Feasting on High Prices, Efficiency Gains
Bloomberg – U.S. Core Inflation Accelerates The underlying pace of U.S. inflation unexpectedly accelerated in December amid increased housing costs, reinforcing the outlook for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates several times in 2018. Excluding food and energy, the so-called core consumer price index increased 1.8 percent from a year earlier after a 1.7 percent… Continue reading Inflation Watch – Core Inflation Rises, But Still Well Short Of Fed’s 2% Target
The Economist – Economists grapple with the future of the labour market WHY is productivity growth low if information technology is advancing rapidly? Prominent in the 1980s and early 1990s, this question has in recent years again become one of the hottest in economics. Its salience has grown as techies have become convinced that machine learning… Continue reading What’s Holding Back Productivity?
Comment Jim Bianco was interviewed on the Financial Sense Newshour on Wednesday. Listen to the interview below.
The Economist – How China won the battle of the yuan Capital controls, economic strength and a bit of luck go a long way “THE horse may be out of the proverbial barn.” So wrote Ben Bernanke, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve, in early 2016, arguing that capital controls might be powerless to save… Continue reading The Chinese Yuan Continues To Strengthen
The Wall Street Journal – Economists Credit Trump as Tailwind for U.S. Growth, Hiring and Stocks Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal say President Donald Trump has had generally positive effects on U.S. economic growth, hiring and the performance of the stock market during his first year in office. The professional forecasters also predicted 2018… Continue reading Economists Credit Trump For Booming Economy