The monetary distortions, imbalances and perverse incentives are finally bearing fruit: trade wars. What ignites trade wars? The oft-cited sources include unfair trade practices and big trade deficits. But since these have been in place for decades, they don’t explain why trade wars are igniting now. To truly understand why trade wars are igniting and…
Stable laws and competitive markets throughout much of the world go a long way toward providing investors confidence in their ability to size-up potential returns and risks, at least over a longer-term horizon. The biggest threats to this investment framework are political instability (with global war the most extreme example), a pandemic (think The Black…
As shown on the daily chart below, Bitcoin has recently broken above several types of resistance, namely a downtrending Andrew’s Pitchfork channel, and two downtrend lines. There are two potential scenarios for Bitcoin relative to the pitchfork channel: price spikes up to its 200% Fibonacci outer edge, which is currently around the 10000 level, or price drops back down to its 100% Fib channel…
Top tickers for midday: VIX, QQQ, SPY.
Today’s Job Opening and Labor Turnover Survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed little change to the broad labor market picture. As shown in the charts below, the quit rate is very stable at round 2.2%. That rate is slightly higher for the private sector at 2.4% but as with the broad quit rate,…
Most market participants have accepted that 2018 is unlikely to be another low-volatility year like 2017, but how do we translate the rising volatility into our market forecast? Some Wall Street bulls such as RBC’s Lori Calvasina have revised their year-end forecasts down recently.* Are those revisions because of the higher VIX? First, given that…
Last month Chinese trade statistics left us with several key questions. Export growth was a clear outlier, with outbound trade rising nearly 45% year-over-year in February 2018. There were the usual Golden Week distortions to consider, made more disruptive by the timing of it this year as different from last year. And then we have…
Have you been eager to see how Citigroup (C – Free Report) performed in Q1 in comparison with the market expectations? Let’s quickly scan through the key facts from this New York-based money center bank’s earnings release this morning: An Earnings Beat Citigroup came out with earnings per share of $1.68, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.61. Further,…
Every month the BLS reports on jobs openings and turnovers. Let’s take a look. The BLS JOLTS report for February shows little change from January. The number of job openings was little changed at 6.1 million on the last business day of February, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the month, hires and separations…
Written by Skenderbeg Alternative Investments Skenderbeg Alternative Investments put into perspectives for the month April 2018. “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” – Bertrand Russell Hedge Funds Drivers of hedge fund alpha revival Barclays Hedge fund industry performance…
