“Follow the Fed” has been a winning investment strategy, but that ought to be confined to what the central bank is actually doing rather than the narrative that it is trying to communicate. Since early December, that narrative has been plainly on offer, with Fed Chair Jerome Powell signalling a series of interest rate reductions […]
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If yesterday’s 10 year yield bounce to over 4% was a function of a more aggressive further interest rate rise by the Fed this month after the June ADP figures, then today’s cooler employment estimates for June from the BIS in its non-farm payroll figures may help dampen some of those fears. All this however, […]
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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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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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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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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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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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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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