Helping you navigate the new normal
The Financial Times has kindly printed my letter below, arguing that it seems the default answer to almost any economic question has now become “more stimulus” from the central bank. After 15 years of subprime lending and then quantitative easing, last week’s warning from the Bank of England suggests there are fewer and fewer economic
Interviewed for this Reuters article, I suggest today’s low levels of market volatility could be “the calm before the storm” Saikat Chatterjee and Vikram Subhedar, AUGUST 11, 2017 / 5:06 PM LONDON (Reuters) – After this week’s war of words between the United States and North Korea triggered the biggest fall in global stocks since the U.S. presidential […]
Its been a great few months for financial markets. All the major markets have seen gains, as the chart shows – something that has happened only once before, since my half-yearly reviews began in March 2009: □ Long-term US Treasury bonds have gained, as long-term interest rates have been falling □ The 30-year bond […]
“Central banks have created a debt-fuelled ‘Ring of Fire’, and we will no doubt have felt many tremors (large and small) as a result, by the time my next 6-monthly update appears in September“. That was my forecast for world stock markets back in March, and I imagine few would argue with it today, as we review developments […]
Global stock markets turned in a vintage experience last week for those who like horror movies. Continued sell-offs in China finally convinced some financial investors, and some senior Western policymakers, that its economy might not be quite as strong as they had assumed. The ensuing panic led to record profits for the high frequency traders (HFTs), as the Dow Jones […]
Crude oil prices continued to fall towards $30/bbl last week. Markets are finally starting to recognise, as the BBC reported last year, that ‘China fooled the world‘ with its stimulus programme. It had not suddenly become middle-class by Western standards in 2009. Instead, aided by developed country stimulus policies, its own stimulus had helped create […]
The blog’s 6-monthly review of global stock markets highlights the narrow nature of the advance since September 2008, when the blog first began analysing developments. It shows their performance since the pre-Crisis peak for each market, and the performance of the US 30-year Treasury bond. Remarkably, only the US, India, Germany and the UK stock markets […]
Interest rate risk is rising in the developed economies as the Great Unwinding of policymaker stimulus continues. Since the blog first highlighted this Unwinding last month: Oil prices have continued to tumble, with Brent now down over $15/bbl from its late-June peak The US$ has continued to rise from multi-year lows versus the yen, euro and pound And of course, […]
In olden days, highwaymen would hang around stagecoach inns, waiting to see when wealthy people were travelling. Then they would hide out along their likely route, getting wet and cold, in order to take their cash. Today the arrival of electronic trading has changed all this. High-Frequency Traders (HFT) now have computer programmes to act as their lookouts, […]
The period since March 2009 has been a wonderful time for most investors in the major markets. As the blog’s 6-monthly update shows, almost every index has increased, and by large amounts:…
Russia has been the biggest winner, up 151%,
