On 28-May I attended a roundtable discussion in Limassol, Cyprus with Athanasios Orphanides, the governor of the central bank of Cyprus, Don Kohn, the ex-vice chairman of the FRB, Lucas Papdemos, the ex-vice president of the ECB, and Nout Wellink, president of the Dutch Central Bank and chairman of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. […]

The Greek situation is the single greatest tail risk for markets. Restructuring, default and/or EU exit will surely bring with it confusion and retrenchment across ALL capital markets. The current situation remains “fluid” with quarterly reviews of the austerity progress creating a never ending worry about the trickle of future bailout monies. To be sure, […]

After yesterday’s longwinded commentary on the US debt ceiling and Europe I will keep today short. The panic surrounding Europe seems to have ebbed and market price action is looking slightly more balanced. Tape bombs are surely lurking around every corner as the ratings agencies work overtime to prove the procyclicality of their operations. Everyone […]

It has been a busy weekend of news with Europe the prime focus of market angst. Before jumping into the issues across the pond I wanted to start today with the US Debt ceiling debate. The gang of six has disbanded and comments from Harry Reid, Barney Frank and Paul Ryan are all suggesting the […]

If you’ve been in the game for 30 minutes and you don’t know who the patsy is - you’re the patsy” – Warren Buffet. There is a non-economic buyer and holder of US government backed securities. We all know that! They are not bound by pnl, shareholders or the threat of losses. They own the […]

Our “Attack of Bond Zombies” theme took a nice turn in the last 24 hours with one of the largest back-ups in a month for TYM. It was getting ugly there for a while with mindless zombie buying of highly negative real return assets. Hopefully, people did not get sucked into Zombie Land! And if […]

I have recreated and attached some interesting charts on commodities from Paul Krake’s piece this morning. Paul is our head of hedge fund sales in Asia on the equity side and he writes an excellent daily comment entitled “A view from the Peak” – it is highly recommend reading. Paul points out something very important […]

May has not been kind to commodity markets. Gold, Silver and Oil are down 5%, 17% and 18% this month, respectively. And that comes right on the heel of levels at the end of April that were cyclical HIGHS for each one. This bloodbath in commodities is confusing. Is it a rethink on global growth […]

''I am for secret, dark debates. When the going gets tough, you have to lie.''- Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg's Prime Minister and chairman of the euro group of single currency members, May 2011 I am reprinting below a fantastic excerpt from a weekend Sydney Morning Herald article - http://www.smh.com.au/business/greek-debt-crisis-to-test-cohesion-of-eu-20110515-1eo4v.html Here it is - "On May 6, […]

Yesterday, in the early morning hours, oil, silver, gold, the euro, bond yields and the spoo all rolled over in unison. It seemed to get moving around 7am with commodity moves being the primary driver. From yesterday until this morning's lows, oil was 8% lower, silver was 15% lower and gold was 2.5% lower. The […]