Thomas Hoenig was President of the Federal Reserve’s Kansas City branch for two decades. He left that post in 2011 to become Vice Chairman of the FDIC. Before that, Mr. Hoenig as a voting member of the FOMC in 2010 cast the lone dissenting vote in each of the eight policy meetings that year (meaning…
Here’s some shit you probably won’t read. But I wasted time on it anyway, because why not? That was the tagline I slapped on a post I did last week called “Thoughts On The ECB Minutes And A Bearish Euro Call For EURUSD Bulls.” You can read that post for yourself (because as noted in…
Gold remains largely forgotten, off the radars of most investors. But that’s likely to change soon as this leading alternative investment is nearing a major bull breakout. Once gold climbs to decisive new bull-market highs, sentiment will turn and investors’ interest will surge. Their resulting buying will rapidly drive gold higher, attracting in more capital…
A BLS report shows widespread declines in manufacturing and mining productivity. A BLS report on Productivity and Costs by Industry shows widespread productivity declines in 2017 for manufacturing and mining industries. Productivity Synopsis Labor productivity declines were widespread among manufacturing industries in 2017, with decreases in 54 of the 86 four-digit NAICS industries. Of the 51 industries…
Options expiration was always an exciting day for me when I was in the trading pits of Chicago. Expiration days can see wild price action and huge levels of orderflow as traders look to close out their expiring positions and roll them to the next options expiration. While this can create opportunity for savvy options…
When Morgan Stanley’s chief equity strategist Michael Wilson released his 2018 equity outlook earlier this year, one particular observation struck us: a curious correlation between volatility and the shape of the yield curve we had not seen anywhere previously. In his discussion in late November 2017, Wilson explains why he expected bigger volatility in the coming year,…
The outlook for the pound, while still bullish, is looking less optimistic today. More specifically, factors including the ongoing slowdown in regional growth, lower expectations for a May rate hike, and significant speculator interest in the currency are hampering the rally. Following Brexit, the trade-weighted value of pound sterling (a measure of GBP relative to…
More is revealed with each passing day. You can count on it. But what exactly the ‘more is of’ requires careful discrimination. Is the ‘more’ merely more noise? Or is it something of actual substance? Today we endeavor to pass judgement, on your behalf. For example, here in the land of fruits and nuts, things…
This morning’s release of the publicly available data from ECRI puts its Weekly Leading Index (WLI) at 148.9, up 1.1 from the previous week. Year-over-year the four-week moving average of the indicator is now at 2.71%, up from 2.70% last week. The WLI Growth indicator is now at 3.2, down from the previous week. “Up…
