The inflation squeeze on the European Central Bank just got tighter
In my macro look forward at 2017 “My-forecast-of-the-big-events-and-macro-trends-for-the-year-ahead-the-12-most-dangerous-months-of-2017/” I flagged the lose/lose decision facing the European Central Bank in the year ahead. The bank’s current policy...
My forecast of the big events and macro trends for the year ahead: The 12 most dangerous months of 2017
I’ve got good news for all those who didn’t find 2016 volatile enough. Yep, 2017 looks likely to top 2016 for volatility. Hard to imagine, perhaps. Even though the CBOE S&P 500 Volatility Index (VIX) spent much of the year near multi-year lows, because...
What’s the “quid” for Softbank’s “quo”?
Update December 30,2016. Softbank (SFTBY) has been in the headlines a lot recently–usually after an announcement by President-elect Donald Trump. There was Softbank CEO and chairman Masayoshi Son emerging after a meeting with Trump at Trump Tower to announce...
Light volumes make it hard to find a market trend–but watch volatility and the VIX
On a day that has been dominated by geopolitical news–the Obama administration has imposed sanctions in response to Russian cyberattacks during the November election–light volume in the financial markets today make drawing any conclusion from market moves...
Funny money in Japan just keeps getting funnier–are you laughing?
The Bank of Japan continues to go where no central bank has gone before. We’re talking “Let’s make it up” territory. The basic problem is that the Bank of Japan’s massive buying of government debt has failed to either raise the inflation...
Very preliminary evidence shows higher interest rates slowing U.S. economy
The data actually make sense when you consider the time lags and what these surveys measure. Contracts to purchase previously owned U.S. homes fell in November, unexpectedly, according to the National Association of Realtors in Washington. Pending home sales declined...
Mixed fallout from higher revision to U.S. GDP growth
The news that U.S. economic growth in the third quarter had been revised upward to 3.5% from an earlier 3.2% has been a mixed blessing for the financial markets. Higher growth has helped stocks resume their post-election rally. But it hasn’t helped the bond...
New home sales tomorrow are early test of Fed’s increase in interest rates
Tomorrow, Friday december 23, we get news on new home sales in November. Coming after some market weakness this week and before the long Christmas holiday (financial markets are closed on Monday, December 26), this report has the power to set the tone for a few days....
Sales growth without profits for the holidays?
Solid growth in retail sales for the November and December holiday shopping season. Retail profits not so much. For November, advance estimates show retail and food services sales climbing 3.7% from November 2015, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. For December,...
Surprise! U.S oil inventories rise when they were expected to drop
For the week ended December 16, U.S. crude inventories grew by 2.26 million barrels, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Going into this morning’s report, oil analysts had expected stockpiles to fall by 2.3 million barrels. That surprise...
China faces an increasingly frenzied, increasingly dangerous game of financial Whac-A-Mole
Where to begin? China faces a depreciating currency, a bond market that has switched from rally to sell off, huge outflows of cash, and what looks like a resurgence of inflation. Fixing one of these problems alone would be a huge challenge to the People’s Bank....
Vale sells fertilizer assets to Mosaic–time for this long-term stock pick to pay down some debt
Brazil’s Vale (VALE) has agreed to sell it fertilizer assets to Mosaic (MOS) for $2.5 billion in cash and stock. The price at 15 times trailing-12-month EBITDA (earnings before taxes, interest, depreciation, and amortization) is a good one given the continued...
Pre-holiday move to safety starts a little early
With trading volumes already starting to slip–trading in Standard & Poor’s 500 stocks was running about 25% below its average for this time of day at noon today–traders and investors are locking in some gains and seeking safety for the week...
Will it be two or three interest rate increases in 2017?
At its December 14 meeting, the Federal Reserve signaled that it was thinking about three more interest rate increases in 2017 instead of two. (The Fed raised interest rates by 25 basis points on December 14. That was the Fed’s first interest rate increase in...
Traders long U.S. dollars figure there’s another 2% to 3% free money in this trade before the end of the year
Yesterday the dollar rose another 1.2% against the euro to $1.0415, the highest since January 2003. And the US. currency climbed by another 1.4% against the yen. The Dollar Index added to its gain to hit a 15-year high. Today the dollar has backed off a bit. Not...
Did the Trump-China trade war heat up overnight?
Maybe it’s just coincidence. Random noise. Sound and fury signifying nothing. I hope so. But I fear not. Yesterday the director of Beijing’s National Development and Reform Commission’s price supervision bureau told the state-run China Daily that its...
Trumphoria has been driving this rally–how long will that last in the financial markets?
Stock markets typically go gaga over a new president. The election is over and the voters who picked the winner bask in the hope that the candidate will actually keep those campaign promises that earned their votes. This year the market is more gaga than usual. The...
Whoa, Nellie! Fed raises rates today and signals more increases than expected in 2017
As expected, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates for the first time this year today. Unexpectedly, the Fed’s dot plot shows that Fed members now see three additional interest rate increases in 2017 instead of the two the financial markets had expected...
How big an oil supply cut do we need to reduce stockpiles? One answer from IEA
Oil is up about 17% since OPEC announced that it had agreed to cut output on November 30. That deal was expanded to include important non-OPEC producers on December 10. Is that enough, though, to switch oil supply from surplus to deficit and to cut into global oil...
Happy now? European Central Bank cuts rate of monthly bond purchases but extends program–maybe for a really long time
The European Central Bank today extended its bond-buying program to the end of 2017 but cut the monthly purchases to 60 billion euros from 80 billion euros. That would take the total for this quantitative-easing effort to 2.2 billion euros ($2.4 billion.) That will...
China’s yuan on collision course with Trump in 2017
$10 billion here. $10 billion there. And soon you’re talking about real money. China’s foreign exchange reserves fell $69.1 billion in November to $3.05 trillion, the People’s Bank of China said today. That follows on a $47.5 billion drop in October....
So much for the post-Trump-victory drug stock rally
“I’m going to bring down drug prices. I don’t like what’s happened with drug prices,” President-elect Donald Trump said in an interview with Time posted on the magazine’s website today. So much, the stock market has concluded today, for the idea that a President...
More asset sales, less debt, higher share price for Chesapeake
Today Chesapeake Energy (CHK), the second largest U.S. producer of natural gas, announced a deal to sell 78,000 acres in Louisiana’s Haynesville Shale for $450 million to Indigo Minerals. The deal brings Chesapeake’s asset sales in 2016 to $2 billion. The...
In Italy Renzi’s constitutional referendum doesn’t just lose; it gets destroyed
The preliminary count at 3:14 a.m. in Rome (9:14 p.m. in New York) shows Italian voters rejecting Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s referendum on constitutional change by an almost 60/40 margin. If Renzi’s proposals had lost by a narrow margin, he might have...
After the big oil rally: Winners from OPEC’s agreement to cut production
This post originally ran on my subscription site JubakAM.com on December 1. The entire energy sector was up Wednesday on OPEC’s agreement to cut production–but not every stock rose to the same degree. I think these themes defined the way that the market...
Last obstacle falls to Fed interest rate increase on December 14–November jobs number almost meets expectations
Good enough for government work. The U.S. economy added 178,000 jobs in November, the Labor Department announced today. That was up from a revised net add of 142,000 jobs in October but below the 180,000 expected by economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Official...
Oil continues to rally but oil stocks run out of fuel and tech stocks take down S&P
After yesterday’s surprise agreement to cut production from OPEC, oil prices have continued to climb–West Texas Intermediate was up 3.07% to $50.96 as of 3:15 p.m. New York time this afternoon–but oil stocks have stalled with such leaders from...
Oil and oil stocks soar today as OPEC agreement is stronger than Wall Street expected
Yesterday I wrote that the financial markets’ reaction to whatever came out of OPEC’s meeting today would depend on how weak or strong the agreement to cut production was. Well, the actual agreement announced today to cut oil production was far stronger...
U.S. economy shows 3.2% growth in third quarter ahead of Fed meeting on interest rates
The second revision to U.S. GDP growth in the third quarter was the charm. The U.S. economy grew at a 3.2% annualized rate in the the three months that ended in September, according to the Commerce Department. That was ahead of the 2.9% growth reported in the initial...Jim’s Daily Email Alerts:
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