The Financial Times – The fears about Japan’s debt are overblown Despite threats of fiscal disaster, the trade against government bonds is a ‘widow-maker’ One quadrillion yen. ¥1,000,000,000,000,000. Two hundred and thirty nine per cent of gross domestic product. Simply to state the epic size of Japan’s public debt invokes a frisson of disaster foretold and… Continue reading Japan’s Debt
View PDF Comment Both Q1 2017 and Q2 2017 saw earnings growth over 10%. The chart below shows that Q3, which is still a month from ending, is under 6% (blue line) and falling.
Bloomberg.com – Draghi Seen Acknowledging Euro Gains at September Decision Governing Council scheduled to meet in Frankfurt Sept. 6-7 ECB president declined to discuss currency in Jackson Hole The euro’s 13 percent surge against the dollar this year presents officials with a new challenge when they meet this week as the central bank struggles to understand… Continue reading Draghi’s September Decision
Comment As the Barron’s cover and the stories below show, everyone is worried about the stock market. Contrarians would argue this is not how stocks peak. Barrons – How This Bull Market Will End After an eight-year climb, stocks are pricey, rates are rising and the world is in turmoil. Our guide to spotting the turn.… Continue reading Everyone Hates Stocks
The Telegraph (UK) – Has flood of Chinese money really dried up? There had been rumours for some time about the Chinese government wanting to slow the flood of money out of the country; a few weeks ago Beijing gave its clearest diktat on the issue yet. The government outlined its plans to curb “irrational” spending outside… Continue reading China Cracks Down On Outflows … Again
Yahoo Finance – Nassim Taleb identifies the tail risk exposure investors should hedge But Taleb pointed us to the years of easy monetary policy brought on by central banks since the financial crisis. This is a relevant concern for investors as the Federal Reserve has been slowly hiking interest rates and is considering reducing its balance sheet.… Continue reading Nassim Taleb and Black Swans
The Wall Street Journal – Why Markets Don’t Care About North Korea—Yet Pricing catastrophic political risk isn’t what stock markets are designed for North Korea conducted its sixth and largest nuclear test just a week after firing a ballistic missile over Japan. One again, though, markets shrugged: Although Korea’s benchmark Kospi index fell nearly 2% in early… Continue reading North Korea
Fintek – Algorithms & Market Automation Ushering Out Traders Permanently If you are a coder or a math wizz your sun could never be brighter. BUT, if you are a trader (why are you still here) your sun is setting…..permanently. Seems that we are just in the first or second inning (baseball talk) of markets becoming totally… Continue reading The End Of Carbon-Based Traders?
Handout, mp3 replay and webcast replay for our conference call titled How Investor Behavior Has Changed Post-Crisis on August 31, 2017 can be found on this webpage. Click the images in that post to play the Mp3 or webcast. The handout can be found here (starts with the second post). A transcript of the Q&A can be found… Continue reading How Investor Behavior Has Changed Post-Crisis Replay
Comment A customer question prompted us to look into what has happened in the markets after other major hurricanes. We used data from Wikipedia which listed all instances of hurricane force winds in coastal states. This is somewhat imprecise, since it uses wind speeds and includes some storms which came near land but never actually… Continue reading Market Behavior After Major Hurricanes
CNBC – Payrolls increase 156,000 in August as job creation cools The U.S. economy created 156,000 jobs in August while the unemployment rate edged higher to 4.4 percent, according to a closely watched government report Friday. Economists surveyed by Reuters had been expecting payrolls to grow by 180,000 in August and the unemployment rate… Continue reading Employment In Pictures