by Bill | Jul 2, 2013 | Featured, Global Economy, Monetary Policy, US Economy
No-one ever said that investing was easy, but when textbook correlations start to break down it can be outright painful. Such of course has been the environment in recent couple of months with stocks and bonds falling in unison. It won’t last forever, but it may...
by Bill | Jun 6, 2013 | Featured, US Economy
The underlying outlook for inflation in the US continues to point to upside risks in the coming years. Endless discussions between hyperinflationists and deflationists are boring and unproductive. We prefer to look at the data and the data is pretty clear. The...
by Bill | May 21, 2013 | Featured, Global Economy, US Economy
The developed world remains mired in the debt crisis that roiled the global economy in 2008. Growth is low, and deleveraging is an ongoing process. However, the response by policymakers has been strong, and free money is leading to bubbles, the misallocation of...
by Bill | May 13, 2013 | Featured, Monetary Policy, US Economy
Employment in the US is closely watched, especially as the Fed has marked it out as an important factor in how it will judge its stance in monetary policy. Payrolls have improved and the unemployment rate has declined, but structural issues stubbornly remain. The...
by Bill | May 7, 2013 | Featured, Tactical, US Economy
In the short run, it is difficult to see what can stop equities at this point. Low inflation, central bank support and relatively robust economic data have created a Goldilocks scenario for equities. However, perhaps as a result it is worthwhile looking at what could...
by Bill | Apr 23, 2013 | China, European Economy, Featured, Global Economy, US Economy
Germany remains the proverbial strong man of Europe, but we are skeptical that this is a fitting moniker. Looking at exports, it is now clear that Germany and thus Europe continues to see weakness. The total value of German exports has now clearly rolled over from its...
by Bill | Mar 5, 2013 | US Economy
Short-leading indicators for the US and global economy continue to show very strong signals mainly driven by low credit spreads and strong stock market performance. In the past two months, we have seen a clear break-out of short-leading global indicators which is...
by Bill | Feb 15, 2013 | Global Economy, US Economy
With the US stock market continuing to grind out new highs, some commentators have cast doubt on the usefulness of so-called macroeconomic surprise indices as a tool for predicting the market. To add weight to the argument, these commentators even include the...
by Bill | Feb 5, 2013 | Featured, Leading Indicators, US Economy
Following a more traditional leading indicator approach, we use the NBER framework for leading and coincident data. The method uses fundamental economic leading indicators to predict changes in the NBER coincident index, which captures personal income, initial...
