Category Archives for "Economics"

A very odd recession!

Oh what a wonderful recession it is. Perhaps this is just the Sitzkreig before the real impacts are felt, but for now the stats from US employment data has yet to support the widespread news narrative of layoffs as the BLS reports US net private sector job growth approaching +400k in January. Maybe the fear […]

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Will the Fed repeat the mistakes of the 1970’s by easing too early?

Natural gas and oil prices are off their peaks, so unsurprisingly so are reported rates of inflation. These in turn have been driving both bond and equity markets since the end of December in anticipation that central banks will ease off the monetary easing and thereby help avoid a potential recession this year.  All this […]

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US employment data yet to support an early easing in monetary policy

We may be heading for a recession, but not one that is so far being flagged by current US employment or wage data. For those anticipating an early peaking of interest rates by the US Federal Reserve, that therefore might come as a disappointment, as without a more pressing evidence of an already significant cooling […]

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Asset allocation for 2023 – first pick your macro scenario

Go into a car salesroom or estate agent (realtor) and ask if it’s a good time to buy and I think we all know what the answer would be. Why then should we be surprised at a similar response from those pushing ‘stawks’ and bonds for a living? Here, the year-end prognostications for 2023 from […]

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Europe can’t take the pain, but ensuring more to come!

Amongst the plethora of distractions, many may have missed the truly seismic events over the last weeks of September. No, I don’t mean the rumblings under the Baltic and interdiction of Germany’s last hope for a warm winter, albeit this won’t help, but the answer to the big question that has overshadowed markets since central […]

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Bond yields are rising, but more importantly normalising

Bond yields are rising, but perhaps more importantly, they are also normalising.  Yields are rising, not because inflation rates are higher, but because of liquidity imbalances between borrowers and lenders. Where inflation fits into this process, is as a catalyst for returning the pricing of capital back to markets by removing the headroom of central […]

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The power of one – WWG1WGA

No, I’m not referring to Qanon, but to the US Federal Reserve. Those central banks out there who thought they could get a free ride behind the Fed’s excessive monetary easing for a decade and a half, are now discovering that it came with a price, when the Fed started to pull back some of […]

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Markets try to second guess the Fed, but perhaps all now irrelevant

That favourite pastime for markets has been to try and anticipate the Fed’s next move, which to be fair, has been the defining equity investment strategy for over a decade and a half.  That however, presupposes that it remains in charge of events rather than now increasingly being at the mercy of them. So while […]

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