The last few days have felt somewhat apathetic in markets. With almost no new information of relevance to chew on, analysts have reached deep into uneventful Bernanke speeches, regurgitated Hoenig comments, fringe data in China and Swiss intervention mechanics to look for clues about what is driving price action. I don’t see any new information […]

Are things that bad that we needed to take 10s to 3.16 and spoos to 1051 in Asia last night? No!!!! But the news in Europe continues to drive panicky and illiquid trading. The market remains on edge with regards to European bank exposures in Central Europe and PIIGS. Hungary is the latest driver that […]

The payroll number missed expectations for private sector jobs buy 140k in May and we had another 15k in missed revisions. So it was a net miss of over 150k jobs and the 10y yield has fallen from 3.33 pre-number to 3.25 post number – 8bps on a 150k miss seems a little light. Granted […]

There are 2 story links below that are worth a quick read this morning. The first is “Blackrock’s Fink Says US Stocks Ready to Rock” and the second “Covered Bond Sales Surge, Transocean Tumbles: Credit Markets”. NSN L3EOYZ1A1I4H NSN L3FLPW0YHQ0X The first article is self-explanatory; the second article quotes some senior GE investment managers who […]

It’s a calm day with not much new news so I’ll keep it short. The EURO still looks sick at just around 122, while equities trade a little better and bonds a little softer. Peripheral Europe is trading very poorly this morning with the 10yr Bund/BTP spread almost at news highs towards 160 and 10yr […]

The following is an excerpt from a letter dated April 27, 1999 to Antonio Martino, a founding member of Forza Italia, from Milton Friedman http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj28n2/cj28n2-10.pdf “Your views and mine are currently very much the same on the euro. . . . What most troubles me as it does you is that members of the euro […]

First of all it’s nice to be back stateside after a long and fascinating trip to Asia. Given the issues in Korea we skipped our last stop in Seoul, thankfully, and I made it back a day early. I want to spend some time this morning on the issues that came up during our discussions […]

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 that the fed funds rate and IOER were […]

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 money woes-- In the past 36 hours we […]

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 have ripped higher and the EUR has squeezed almost back […]