We have previously called Donald Trump a “black swan walking” and not necessarily because we disagree with his politics. It’s just that no one has any clue what he would do as president (besides try to force Mexico to pay for a wall that will never, ever be built) and the market hates uncertainty. W
With everything going on in the world, it seems somewhat surreal that the top news is the first US presidential debate and a possible Disney bid for Twitter. Frankly, we don’t understood what exactly is wrong over at Twitter. It’s the most reliable, timely news service on the planet (even if some of
Needless to say, all anyone cares about on Monday is the presidential debate which has morphed into a Super Bowl-like spectacle. It’s almost like we should have just declared a national holiday so everyone could sit around, drink beer and tailgate ahead of it. But alas, money never sleeps as they sa
On Friday, we brought you Goldman’s recommendations for how to trade the upcoming US presidential election. In a nutshell, you want to be long stocks with a significant proportion of revenue derived domestically and you want to get long anything that benefits from fiscal spending. This is obviously
There’s an election coming up. Did you notice? Apparently you didn’t: (Chart: Goldman) As you can see from the above, we’re well below the median (in fact we’re below the 25 percentile) when it comes to equity market uncertainty ahead of a US presidential election. Which is of course curious conside
It seems pretty clear that markets are not going to cooperate with the Bank of Japan. Recall that earlier this week, Haruhiko Kuroda announced the bank would begin managing the yield curve in an apparent effort to steepen things up a bit so the country’s banks don’t shrivel up and die. Here’s a look
What can you say about Thursday? Triumph of the central bankers we suppose. It’s all up: That’s stocks and oil. Now have a look at bonds: Same story. Steady, but with a yield bias lower. Here’s how Bloomberg’s Richard Breslow put it: “That dud landed with a thud. It fits the FOMC’s desired narrative
Ok, well that worked out well… Fed on hold? Just buy it all, dammit. And here’s the VIX: Poor volatility - we’re starting to feel sorry for it. Here’s the full bullet point summary for anyone who missed it: FED SAYS NEAR-TERM RISKS TO OUTLOOK ‘APPEAR ROUGHLY BALANCED’ FED: HIKE CASE HAS STRENGTHENED
Make no mistake, there really was no getting this “right” for the Bank of Japan. When you’re monetizing the entirety of gross JGB issuance, buying up 60% of the ETF market, and rates are already negative, there’s not much you can do in the way of “shocking and aweing” the market. So they got “creati
All you have to do to understand how nervous markets are ahead of Wednesday is have a look at how the major averages across the globe performed today. Everything is mixed from the US to Europe to Asia. There are lingering concerns that the market may be pricing the Fed decision wrong. Barclays think
