“The new car market is no longer a market, unfortunately. It’s a state-imposed supply chain.”Robert Forrester, Chief Executive of Vertu Motors (UK) Unfortunately, this is a bit like noticing the iceberg after not only hitting it but realising that there aren’t enough life-rafts. At present, the car industry, including dealers such as Vertu, are reporting […]
Continue reading
When the party stops The parallels between this cycle’s tech wunderkind, NVIDIA and yesteryear’s CISCO are not new, but worth repeating. As no group can out grow the market in perpetuity, the question always remain as to how far out will markets choose to reach out into the uncertain future to fix their horizon values. […]
Continue reading
If ‘everyone’ believes interest rates are going back down, then why was US corporate bond issuance up +54% YoY in Q2 and with the high yield/junk end the most active? Seems like corporate treasurers were happy to unload some extra debt to “willing buyers at a fair market price” as Jeremy Irons character ‘John Tuld’ […]
Continue reading
Markets are down as a sense of fear grips investors. That however, has less to do with a sudden re-evaluation of the economic outlook following the release of the US employment survey data for July and much more to do with a growing panic that the US Fed is resisting the pressure to be bounced […]
Continue reading
US residential construction can slightly lag private housing starts, but never to this extent. Either the US residential construction industry has become a lot less efficient (as in the ratio of employees needed to build the average house), or there’s something increasingly fishy with the official BIS employment data.
Continue reading
Has the US BIS not got the memo to support the easing narrative with softening economic data, or is the ECB and Euro being hung out to dry? For those hoodwinked by the manipulated GDP deflator assumptions (see below) between Q4 2023 and Q1 this year, into over-estimating the slowdown in economic activity must have […]
Continue reading
As markets lose faith in the Fed’s ability to manage its easing pivot, gold and silver prices are soaring to new records notwithstanding hardening long bond yields. For investors wanting to participate in this trade, the choice seems to be between physical gold bullion, paper gold certificates or those mining the stuff. Those with a […]
Continue reading
At times like this it is difficult to comprehend whether there are any adults left at the helm in the US. Jerome Powell’s attempts to ape his failed predecessor, Arthur Burns, is unraveling as fast as gold prices and bond yields are rising in the face of a so-called Republican Congress seemingly incapable of reining […]
Continue reading