Unusual Volatility

January 25, 2022 This won't be a long post, but perhaps it's importance will be obvious in the near future. In a similar fashion it doesn't hold answers, but simple questions about what in the world is going on. Volatility is highly, highly unusual. If you watched the intraday action for the markets over the…

Craving Capital

January 24, 2022 The financial world has been overcome with a binary switch over the past forty years or so. It's the idea of risk-on or risk-off. Many times headlines on venues such as CNBC, Marketwatch, even Bloomberg, talk about market conditions being risk-on or risk-off. The big money, those who invest in the hundreds…

The Yield Curve

January 9, 2022 The last time this blog highlighted the yield curve, the 10 year treasury was at 1.55%. Today it stands at about 1.77%. This doesn't seem that much higher of course, but on a percentage basis it is. It's higher by 15% and that can have a significant impact on cash flow. For…

Turn Off The Taps

January 7, 2022 A belated happy New Year to those who peruse this page. This space has been negative on markets for so long, it can now be measured in years rather than months, and that has enough similarities to the classic story 'The boy who cried wolf', that the best solution was to stop…

Nothing New Under the Sun

July 9, 2021 There has been nothing written here for some time. During that time there has been a lot of action in markets, but not much is new. The world is still not making much sense from a fundamental perspective but that will go largely unnoticed by most readers. Economists however are taking note.…

TINA is Leaving

February 26, 2021 It was way back in October that this blog highlighted that it was A Little Early to Worry about rising interest rates, but here we are, almost exactly six months later and it is no longer too early to worry. Over the past two weeks, the market has gone through unsettled and…

China’s Greatest Export

February 15, 2021 With a rational government in place, moving policy forward, the world can turn to real issues that don't involve babysitting world leaders. Or so it would seem. Here is a brief review of some of the interesting things going on in the world, that some may have missed because there is a…

The Effect of Liquidity

February 1, 2021 The last post (Roving Bands of Pretend Capitalists), took a somewhat curt look at a couple of the issues surround the GameStop short squeeze and highlighted a couple of errors in regulations. The next step is to draw a picture of liquidity and what happens when it goes away . . .…

Roving Bands of Pretend Capitalists

January 29, 2021 If anyone is following the news, you may be very aware of one of the most interesting phenomena in investing in a long, long time. The GameStop short squeeze. This is really big news for a lot of reasons but for many it is a completely foreign event, like the discovery of…

Thank You America

January 25, 2021 Thank you for voting in a president. While it may be difficult to agree with some of the things on the Democratic agenda, it is far more difficult to find room for a tyrannical, self-centred and dangerous president like Donald Trump. Thank you, from the rest of the civilized and democratic world.…