- Home /
- Economics
End of cycle warnings for marketing services
How many leading marketers know what return they’re getting on their marketing investment? From P&G marketing honcho, Marc Pritchard’s gripes about poor transparency and accountability and a “crappy media chain”, one might surmise not many. If you can’t trust the data on who is being reached, any resulting ROI calculation derived from it is therefore […]
Continue readingPOTUS missile attack on Syria – more Kabuki theatre than prelude to WW3
Markets attempt to discount the future, which for the present often means trying to anticipate what the new POTUS is up to. Unfortunately, when he is failing to deliver what he promised (Healthcare and tax reform), but doing what he explicitly said he wouldn’t (bombing Syria) one might be forgiven for wanting to move into […]
Continue readingTrump and hot air lift February US jobs data – but will this be enough to justify a rate rise?
Does anyone not expect a March rate increase? After raising its Q1 GDP estimate from +3.09% to +3.19%, the +227k net private sector job adds reported in yesterday’s non-farm payroll data for February (after the +298k already reported mid-week by ADP), coming after similarly buoyant data released for January, the Fed seems to be setting […]
Continue readingJanuary beat for US non-farm payrolls – or did they?
Don’t you just love it? Every month the financial community analyses the eagerly awaited US non-farm payroll numbers and impresses us all with their reading of the state of the economy and the next potential move in interest rates and therefore life as we know it. Of course for particularly sophisticated algo funds all this […]
Continue readingAdjustments to seasonal adjustments ‘add’ +101k jobs to December’s reported non-farm payroll figure
+144k net private sector job additions in December may a little below the trend, but with the previous two months revised up by +53k, this is probably where most of the headlines will stop, although Fed diehards may also point to the further rise in average hourly wages to a ten year high of +2.9% […]
Continue readingGold & Gold miners – when to buy and how to value
The gold price might be troublesome to predict, but at least the relationship between this and the share price of gold miners such as Barrick are proving to be more reliable. Back in July when I initiated coverage, I suggested markets were applying what seemed to be a ridiculously simple valuation methodology. Forget IRR with […]
Continue readingFed rate rise – Cui Bono?
After raising its Federal funds target range to 0.25-0.5% in December 2015, Yellen has waited exactly a year and now edged up rates a further +25bps as the target range is raised to 0.5-0.75%, while also signalling that these could rise to around 1.4% by the end of 2017, thereby suggesting three further +25bps increases […]
Continue readingIs Italy too big to fail?
Is Italy really limbering up for a rejection of the Euro and a return to the lira, or just bluffing? The narrative would appear to be, that if the ECB won’t bail out the Italian banks with fresh Euros, then Italy should do it itself by returning to the Lira. Whether the threat cuts much […]
Continue reading