The best 20b USD any government ever spent

The ECB bought 20b USD of peripheral bonds last week - and the entire 400b USD stock of Greek debt went up 15 to 20 points - the largest return on investment for any government program in history I think! Furthermore, those returns do not include the even larger...

I wish we could fast forward to parity in the Euro

Reserve asset managers and real money are caught VERY long Euros. International corporates with receivable/payable mismatches are scrambling to hedge Euro exposures. And of course, speculative money is pushing hard to short Euros. The rest of the flows in global...

On the road again…

It’s going to be a short commentary today as we are putting the finishing touches on the May monthly (out tomorrow) and I am heading out to Asia for a 5 city, 10 day tour of duty. I must say that I am really looking forward to the discussion/debate with Asian reserve...

Slow ride, take it easy

It’s a Foghat kind of morning. Everything has slowed - vols are off, spreads are tightening, curves are steepening, risk is rallying and the EUR is softening - Thank you, Mrs. Merkel, sorry Mr. Weber. The key for investors now is to figure out where the wall of EUR...

The new old correlation pattern

While it might seem calm, it is very important to note that as risk assets rally to their highs of the days, EURUSD is trading down to the lows of the day. In fact, the whole dollar index is moving to its highs of the day. While we have seen some periods recently...

Why this is more like Mar 2009 than Oct 2008

There are a number of commentators (including myself) that have compared the European bailout package to the US TARP announcement in October 2008. Some of these commentators have gone on to note that in the months and quarters following the TARP announcement, risk...