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’On the promise of exports
President Obama’s announcement, in January 2010, of his aim to double US exports in five years had the “benefit” of timing, coming so soon after the historic collapse of worldwide trade had just begun to recover.
America, healing?
The latest ADP numbers for private sector jobs in the US have demolished expectations: 325k jobs were created November-December against estimates that ranged from +145k to +225k.
Missing piece of the puzzle – US housing to bottom in 2012?
As Monday’s Lex notes regarding the US stock bounce has a sting in the tail
Don’t look now but amid the negative news on everything from the shambles in Europe, America’s debt wranglings or worries over China,
The QE3 pain threshold
Here’s an interesting graphic from Nomura’s fixed income team for bubble addicts.
It shows the pain thresholds for QE3.
As you can see, inflation expectations are some way from being compatible with another round of bank note printing – although that hasn’t stopped a lot of market participants and parts of the media talking about QE as a potential market saviour.
A commercial real estate mini-pop
Just one month after registering a new index low, an eye-catching top line from Moody’s:
The Moody’s/REAL Commercial Property Price Index (CPPI) measured a 6.3% increase in May, the first positive move in six months and the largest one-month increase since the inception of the index.
Consumption conundrums continued
David Leonhardt’s weekend column in the New York Times on the despondency of the US consumer has justifiably received a lot of play in the interwebs.
Here’s his main argument:
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently published a jarring report on what it calls discretionary service spending,
How do you say risk-off in Italian?
The benchmark yield on an Italian 10-year reached 5.718 after the largest one-day fall in the bond’s value since 1994.
Meanwhile the yield on 10-year US Treasuries pushed back under 3 per cent. So much for that post-QE2 price drop.
How dare you, I’m a sovereign
Don’t mess with a non-US sovereign. They still have the power, even if they have deficits.
Risk reported reported in April that US regulators were proposing to make collateral-posting for sovereigns compulsory.
“The FX market has lost its anchor of reason”
Take everything you ever thought you knew about foreign exchange and bin it.
According to HSBC’s stellar FX guru David Bloom, currency markets are trading through the looking glass, and will continue to do so for some while.
If it bleeds…
With hedge funds going into the meedja sentiment business this is probably worth exploring:
Finance news articles mentioning ‘crisis’ are at a three-year low, say Société Générale’s cross-asset research team using a famed indicator:
For all the BMWs in China
From BMW’s record earnings statement on Wednesday:
“The BMW Group is well on its way towards achieving new sales volume and earnings records for the full year. We are aiming for a record sales volume of well over 1.5 million vehicles as well as new full-year sales volume records for each of our premium brands BMW,
Better the quality collateral you know?
Not even an S&P warning over the state of the US debt pile has been enough to take the shine off US Treasuries.
On Monday, 10-year US yields actually ended up falling (after briefly rising) following the credit rating agency’s announcement:
Non-farm payrolls up 216,000
Non-Farm payrolls rose by 216,000 jobs in March, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Analysts had been expecting an increase of 190k jobs in the month. The unemployment rate came in at at 8.6 per cent,
Cable unwinds
The post budget sell-off continues, leaving cable close to an important support level at $1.5980.
Next stop $1.5750, according to chart watchers.
But does the weakness reflect worries that the
And the award for extreme optimism in the face of reality goes to
…. someone other than SocGen’s Albert Edwards, who is in fine pessimistic form in his latest strategy note.
This week sees the perma bear take Reuters to task for a recent report on US home sales.
Magnus on a chronic under-reporting of private sector surpluses
UBS senior economic adviser George Magnus addresses the issue of Washington’s budgetary crisis on Monday.
As he points out, to some there is a major fiscal imbalance that has to be addressed, but no crisis — while to others the US is bust and nothing short of an immediate downsizing will neutralise a looming austerity crisis.
The (still weak) US lending recovery
A graph from Moody’s Analytics, plotting the federal funds rate against the growth in commercial and industrial loans:
The deep double-digit percentage declines in bank business loans of the financial crisis are firmly behind us.
Debt ceiling attitudes
If you polled FT Alphaville’s seven bloggers and asked whether we’d like to hire a dedicated group of interns to do our photocopying and fetch coffee and think of great ideas that we could shamelessly steal,
A gasoline snow print
Everyone loves a snow day.
And recent snowfalls across North America, it seems, have provided many with an excuse to take one. (That is, to stay at home for the day rather than to go to work or school.)
The stay-at-home trend has been so significant,
The beast with two backs
We mean the greenback and the redback, naturellement.
USD/CNY will likely be concentrating more than a few minds in 2011, with investors looking for ways to play the reflation trade, and thus, a rebalancing trade,
An unbalanced take on imbalances
Unbalanced, and thus blisteringly honest.
Fred Goodwin, “Mr Macro” strategist at Nomura, unplugged:
Is there any justice?
When a child misbehaves, parents send them to their room and take away Facebook privileges.
No, Uncle Sam isn’t bailing Europe out
Either US Treasury officials (or Reuters ledes) are supreme masters of subtlety, or markets are very stupid.
We’re going with the latter.
We want you to carefully note the following wording of this Reuters report:
[Wilmot's PMI tour] That will do nicely
So that’s it: US ISM new orders are out and fell by 2.3 points to 56.6, following last month’s 7.8 point jump.
We were expecting a 1.5 point drop, the most typical outcome after huge jumps. So that’s marginally weaker than we expected.
[Wilmot's PMI tour] The big three
Here in pictures is what the big three – China, the eurozone and the US (each of them making up about 20 per cent of global production) — look like going into their November PMIs.
First, China:
Now the Euro area:
Another house price decline
Because of the lag, the latest release of the S&P/Case-Shiller home price index won’t shock anyone, but it’s still worth noting:
New York, November 30, 2010 – Data through September 2010, released today by Standard &
When multilateral monetary policy is not an option…
One of the reasons why Beijing has tended to stockpile US Treasuries is connected to the need to absorb surpluses generated via the US trade deficit with China.
China’s dollar peg largely depends on the process.
The mathematics of inventories
While the eurozone plays out its tortuous journey to disintegration, much more concerning developments are occurring. We are convinced that the US economy will slow surprisingly sharply in the months ahead.
Why QT, not QE, is the risk
A plan for a plan is not a plan, says HSBC on Friday.
And this is the reason why QT is the risk now, not QE.
Quick explainer: QT is what HSBC’s senior FX strategist Daniel Hui et al are calling quantitative tightening — a.k.a.