Many in the doom and gloom crowd have warned of impending disaster as JGB prices plummet. The typical story centers upon unsustainable debt levels and higher debt service costs associated with higher rates. The story line generally involves a vicious payment spiral...
In early 1995 I made my first trip to Japan. At the time, as a young market strategist at Swiss Bank Corporation in London, I had just seen USDJPY cart out nearly every levered trader on its freefall from 105 to 80. And when I arrived in Japan that Spring, I quickly...
I am putting the finishing touches on a commentary that highlights the some of the similarities between the 1995/98 period and the current environment. The focus is on Japan and EM - and needless to say, it will not paint a pretty picture for EM. I hope to send that...
So the verdict is in. Gold is settling down 8 to 10 percent from its pre-crash levels and the world feels mighty fine. Spoos are a few ticks from record highs and the Nikkei is Motte Isuma!! So much for the endless stream of comments suggesting that because of a Gold...
As one might have expected, I received quite a number of responses to Monday's commentary. While there were a few that expressed solidarity with the view that this gold sell-off is a POSITIVE sign for the GLOBAL reflation/recovery trade, most of the replies were...
What a wild week! While it felt great to be back in the risk pool just before last Wednesday's liftathon in spoos; the late week Yen strength, gold meltdown, JGB long-end volatility and Cypriot bailout shenanigans provided plenty to ponder. Of course the long term...
There is no question that the news from Japan has been extremely important for global markets. And to be sure, we have been arguing since November 2012 that significant changes to BoJ policy would be one of the primary drivers of ALL global asset prices in 2013. Some...
For the last couple weeks we have stepped away from our multi-year risk-on views. The news in Cyprus was enough to temporarily change the game. And while many folks have questioned our HIGHLY unusual bout of nervousness over such a small country, I suspect that once...
The BoJ has at least 10 different policy levers to operate within the market place - the amount of JGB purchases, the average maturity of JGB purchases, the amount of CP purchases, the amount of non-financial BBB corporate purchases, the amount of JREIT purchases, the...
The Sunday evening Cypriot bail-in deal shows that the Germans are willing to go to great lengths to secure a political win. And let’s be clear, what was agreed last night was a HUGE win for Merkel. She silenced SPD critics on the issue of bailing out Russian...
The Sunday evening Cypriot bail-in deal shows that the Germans are willing to go to great lengths to secure a political win. And let’s be clear, what was agreed last night was a HUGE win for Merkel. She silenced SPD critics on the issue of bailing out Russian oligarchs. And she looked tough on EMU […]
