A few months back I wrote 2 commentaries- one entitled “Remain calm, all is well” and another one entitled “Remain calm, all is well redux”. Both of these were in response to 25bps discount rate hikes by the Federal Reserve. At that time many clients seemed convinced...
1. The Fed 2009 consolidated financial statements 2. Separating Derivatives businesses from commercial banking business 3. Poor initial claims data 4. EU unraveling 5. Real money woes I will get to 1, 2 and 3 tomorrow as I think 4 and 5 are the most important- Real...
Given the market developments over the past couple days, it feels right that I should be writing today’s commentary from Tokyo – the global center of government policy mishaps. Since I last wrote on Wednesday risk assets have sold off sharply, USTs and Euro govvies...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
The May 6th ECB press conference will likely go down as Trichet’s last stand. There were some amazing quotes from that conference such as Trichet’s categorical denial of the fact that the ECB discussed buying government bonds outright. But most interesting was when...
The May 6th ECB press conference will likely go down as Trichet’s last stand. There were some amazing quotes from that conference such as Trichet’s categorical denial of the fact that the ECB discussed buying government bonds outright. But most interesting was when Trichet discussed the difference between the “E” and the “M” in EMU […]
