Well we knew it was going to be all about the Brainard, so we figured we might as well wait and see if the uber-dove gets hawkish. Here was Barclays pre-speech take: “Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard is scheduled to speak on the state of the US economy on September 12. Her speech is a
Alright, so next week is critical. We’re just going to be honest with you because it’s the sad truth. All eyes are on this “mystery” Brainard speech on Monday where for some reason everyone seems convinced she’s going to inexplicably morph into a hawk in front of our very eyes. Of course we could al
Ok, so today was an important day symbolically - and not just because the Dow fell nearly 400 points. That’s a drop in the proverbial bucket compared to how far we’ve come since 2009. There are several things you absolutely have to take note of. Let’s start with the dollar and vol: The dollar is
Do you want to know something that continually amazes us? Of course you do. Have a look at this chart: (Chart: Deutsche Bank) So pretty clearly, the market has no faith whatsoever in the Fed’s ability and/or willingness to raise rates, right? Well that being the case, why is it that all it takes is
Has the market learned to shrug off central banks? We doubt it but today’s reaction to the EcB provides some semblance of hope. Still there’s a palpable degree of skepticism. Here’s our favorite, Bloomberg’s Richard Breslow: “Others focus on the disruptive rather than liquidity enhancing activities
Ok, so Draghi was a dud. Which pardon the crassness, but anyone with any common sense knew he would be. September is a month to preserve optionality- not to be a hero. This has been a year characterized by lost faith in central banks. See the movements in the yen for evidence. This wasn’t the
Ok, get ready. The September central bank-a-thon begins Thursday at 8:00 ET with Super Mario and the ECB. For those who missed it, here’s the complete September tail risk event schedule courtesy of UBS: (Chart: UBS) So let’s talk Draghi, shall we? Now if you ask us, we think the counter-cyclical roo
It’s always dangerous to call a top in absurdity (“peak absurdity”, if you will), but if we’re not close to it by now when it comes to flip-flopping Fed predictions then we don’t know what peak absurdity might look like. As Richard Breslow put it last week: “Every market trading in lockstep is a leg
So it’s a sleepy Tuesday, which is to be expected because God knows what went on in the Hamptons over the weekend. But the desks better get it together quick because as you all know, this is a big month. In fact - and this is a sad state of affairs- the fate of the
Well, you’ve gotta love crude. A while back - we’re not sure exactly how long, chalk it up to bad short-term memory - we noted that this was about to become another round of OPEC headline hockey, all of it completely meaningless except of course to the non-thinking algos that will simply buy/sell th
