Never in human history have governments spent so much and coerced so many in the name of health, yet achieved such adverse results. In year three of a virus with a lower mortality risk than for seasonal flu to all but the fat, old and already sick, not only are more people now dying, but […]
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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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As political debate descends into the absurd, I am reminded that imitation is often regarded as the sincerest form of flattery; although the look adopted by Biden for his latest rant may have some uncomfortable antecedents. The late great Raul Julia seems to have aced the imagery in his last role as the deranged dictator […]
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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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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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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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Perhaps Biden was correct and this is not a recession, as the US reports another increase in monthly private sector jobs in July. This time from June’s reported +404k net adds to almost half a million (+471k) in July, with annualised hourly wages meanwhile increasing by +5.6%. But hang on, if one strips out the […]
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Is anyone really that surprised that Nancy Pelosi’s husband (Paul) may have been front-running a $52bn CHIPS Plus bill that his wife was promoting a couple of days after the disclosure of his substantial investments in a potential beneficiary, NVIDIA? Unfortunately, such behaviour has become all too normalised in the US’s two-tiered judicial system. What […]
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