In the past week I have seen many investors who have quite modest allocations to equities, physical real estate and commodities. These guys are your typical insurance, mutual fund and money manager types. I was also at the ASF meetings in Vegas with many of the same FI focused types. The overriding theme from my […]

There have only been 115 trading days in history where the SPX closed above 1500. The periods were: Mar/Apr 2000, Aug 2000, May-July 2007 and Sept-Dec 2007. And while we didn't settle above 1500 yesterday, it was our first intraday peek above this threshold in over 5 years. These physiological break points may seem innocuous […]

Since 2009 we have all come to understand who has our back when it all goes wrong. Our beloved Colonel, and his allies at the BoE, ECB, SNB and BoJ, have always stepped in when times got tough. With their oversized fire hoses, they spray the streets with so much liquidity that the rising tide […]

In the last couple weeks the lines between US fiscal and monetary policy became uncomfortably blurred. In response to the impending US debt ceiling constraint on government spending, a number of prominent economists, congressmen, pundits and bloggers advocated that the US Treasury mint a 1 trillion dollar platinum coin. Such a move would allow the […]

In Jan 2012, the FOMC released the SEP showing that 3 participants saw the Fed Funds rate rising buy the end of 2012 - one member was at 50bps and two were at 1 percent. By the time we got to April 2012 there was one at 50bps, one at 1 percent and one at […]

In the last 6 months I have tried to spend as little time as possible discussing the fiscal cliff. It was always a farfetched notion that some static, partial equilibrium analysis of a $600b hit to the US economy was going to be relevant. But the markets love a good Armageddon story; and a 3.6% […]

This will be my last note for 2012, and as such I thought it would be most appropriate to review the one theme we have pushed consistently throughout the year. Yes, you guessed it, the third iteration of our rhyming risk-on refrain: spoos and blues. The origin of this trade idea can actually be traced […]

Back on Nov 1st, when the NKY was below 9000, I wrote a commentary entitled “A lesson on how to lose central bank independence”. The note highlighted a “curious additional release” on the BoJ website after their October policy meeting entitled “Measures Aimed at Overcoming Deflation” http://www.boj.or.jp/en/announcements/release_2012/k121030b.pdf. This statement was jointly signed by the BoJ […]

Interpreting the December FOMC statement is not an easy task. The market is still digesting what an explicit 6.5/2.5 "Evans Rule" really means. Is it bullish? Is it bearish? Is there room to miss? Under what conditions would a miss be tolerated? What are the next steps if inflation dips or unemployment rises? How quickly […]

The most interesting story on the global macro horizon has nothing to do with the fiscal cliff, US housing markets, Greece, Argentina, Spain or China. This story has been percolating for decades, and an enormous amount of money has been lost by the global macro investing community trying to get it right. The story of […]