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Monday, December 03, 2012

#Brazil depends on #China for 17.5% of their foreign #trade

slowdown in China would likely crush Brazil’s external sector and domestic economy while an economic crisis in Brazil would have a minimal impact on the Chinese economy

How A Hard Landing For China Became A Helicopter Eject Seat For Brazil | ZeroHedge



Depending on what market or macro indication you choose to believe in, China is doing terribly badly or is on a sustainable path to a more domestic consumption-based economy. This weekend's PMIs show the economy is barely limping higher but Industrial Output is dismally low; HSI is ripping higher while SHCOMP is at multi-year lows. What is more critical, as Bloomberg's Michael McDonough points out today, is China’s growing role as a transmission mechanism between the economies of the developing and developed world. China’s economic rise has been accompanied by a surge in its appetite for imports - especially raw materials - even as global demand has been slow to recover. This introduces new stresses for many export-oriented countries by reducing the diversity of their trade relationships as they become more and more dependent on China in particular, creating substantial risk for those economies, which account for an increasing share of global GDP. Russian, Brazilian and Indian trade volumes have become heavily dependent on China at 10.6 percent, 17.5 percent and 9 percent, respectively. An economic crisis in Brazil would have a minimal impact on the Chinese economy, while a slowdown in China would likely crush Brazil’s external sector and domestic economy.
 
Source: Bloomberg Briefs


How A Hard Landing For China Became A Helicopter Eject Seat For Brazil | ZeroHedge





Monday, November 26, 2012

Global #Stocks Rebound

Of the 30 country #ETF listed, 18 are above their 50-days, while 7 are actually overbought.  The S&P 500 tracking SPY, on the other hand, is just barely above oversold territory.

See the article online here: Bespoke Investment Group - Think BIG - Global Stocks Rebound


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Friday, November 16, 2012

Gold & Silver Plunge Deja Deja Deja Vu | ZeroHedge


#Gold & #Silver Plunge Deja Deja Deja Vu



Charts: Bloomberg

Whether it is leveraged AAPL traders forced to sell winning collateral to meet margin calls, correlation-driven algos running stops down and up, or simply the whims of worried custodians managing risk for their clients' holdings; one thing is sure - someone (or more than one) has been a size seller of precious metals in the US-day-session-open to Europe-close period for four days in a row now...
Gold & Silver Plunge Deja Deja Deja Vu | ZeroHedge

Friday, October 26, 2012

Here's The Recession Warning Chart That Everyone Is Now Passing Around

Core Capex 3-Month Annualized - Business Inside
Here's The Recession Warning Chart That Everyone Is Now Passing Around

A few weeks ago, we mentioned that Gluskin-Sheff economist David Rosenberg was worried about the sharp downturn in the year-over-year growth rate of the 3-month average of core CAPEX (capital expenditure) orders.

His interpretation: The fiscal cliff is already creating a lot of uncertainty, and could be pushing the US economy closer to recession.

Now everybody is talking about this fact and this chart.

In his latest note out, BTIG's Dan Greenhaus updates Rosenberg's chart with the latest data. It's still not pretty (though it actually ticked up a tad with the latest reading.



Greenhaus writes:

But the aforementioned decline in capital goods orders speaks to the larger concern for investors; the fact that a potential economic slowdown does not begin after the fiscal cliff is triggered but rather, as we’ve been saying for months, before. And if this isn’t resolved, it might be too late before long.

In addition to Greenhaus, we see via Cullen Roche that Moody's has put out roughly the same chart as a warning:



Everyone is watching this measure, and wants to know: Is this just pre-fiscal cliff jitters that will snap back next year, or is this the start of something bad?

Either way: You've been warned.

Read the whole article online here: Core Capex 3-Month Annualized - Business Insider

Thursday, October 25, 2012

An Hour Of Your Time Has Never Been Worth Less | ZeroHedge



average hourly earnings for US citizens has dropped 90% in terms of Gold in the 40 years since Nixon's 1971 fiat-fiasco


 

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2012/10/20121024_wagegold.png
Whether it's deleveraging, spare capacity, dollar debasement, productivity gains, or just plain old obesity, in real purchasing power terms, an hour of your time has never been worth less. In the 40 years since Nixon's 1971 fiat-fiasco, the value of the average hourly earnings for US citizens has dropped 90% in terms of Gold. The last time that our labor's efforts garnered such a low value saw a twenty year credit-blown releveraging (from 1980 to 2001) to save-us-all; we suspect that debt saturation will limit the ability of any central bank to create such a 'recovery' in labor-value once again. Since the peak in 2001, 60 minutes of your valuable time has lost 81% of its purchasing power! Is this what globalization looks like?

An Hour Of Your Time Has Never Been Worth Less | ZeroHedge


Monday, October 22, 2012

A Global Rally Is Starting To Gather Steam


A Global Rally Is Starting To Gather Steam 



 





image

It's still very quiet, but a bit of a rally is starting to gather steam.
US futures are up modestly, and Europe, which had been dead-flat is now solidly higher.
Leading the way is Italy, which is up more than 0.8%.
Here's Italy's benchmark stock index the FTSE MIB.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/morning-market-part-ii-october-22-2012-10#ixzz2A1VdrcrS
 
Morning Market Part II: October 22 - Business Insider

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

#Gold Slides Below Failed Wedge; #Silver Completes Double Top #charts

Gold Slides Below Failed Wedge; Silver Completes Double Top

Gold Daily chart 8:22PM EDT 10/14/2012
gold 10/14/2012 daily chart

Failed Wedge: Gold has been stalling its rally since testing the 2012 highs around 1790. After breaking to 1795.80, it appears gold may have topped off, or is at least in an apparent consolidation. The daily chart shows the precious metal priced in USD forming a rising wedge. However, it failed to bounce off the projected support for another upswing, and instead fell sharply to start this week (10/15). The RSI was in a bearish divergence in overbought territory, but has already resolved that.
Momentum: Now, the RSI is near 40, so if the gold market is in consolidation, we might see some slowdown, or support in the near-term, for the rest of this global session (10/15).
If on a subsequent pullback, the RSI can be held under 60, preferably under 50, this nascent bearish momentum from the 1795.80 high is still intact. If price can hold under the projected falling trendline seen in the 4H chart, the market should continue to focus on some of the lower support pivots. These support pivots are 1736 and 1715.22.
Gap: This MT4 chart is showing a gap. Many retail trading platforms will show this gap, meaning prices changed over the weekend, while these platforms did not upgrade price. It was more than a $10 gap – one that deserves attention.
Gold 4H chart 8:25PM EDT 10/14/2012
gold 10/14/2012 4H chart

Silver Daily chart 8:32PM EDT 10/14/2012
silver 10/14/2012 daily chart
Silver was spotted developing a double top last week, and starts this week completing it by falling under the pattern support of 33.28. The daily chart shows a double top breakout projection roughly to 31.22. A slightly more aggressive projection would be to the next possible support factors of 50% retracement at 30.74, and the 200-day simple moving average slightly lower.
The daily RSI is also at 40, which means if the market is in consolidation, there should be some support here in the near-term. (rest of the session or a little more).
A pullback should really not go back above the projected falling trendline. Holding price under it is a sign of silver bears taking over. A break above the central pivot area around 34.20-34.35 could be taken as a sign of a false breakout to the downside, which suggests a rally to test the previous high of 35.38.
Silver also shows a downside gap of about $0.50. Although gold fell more in price, silver fell more percentage wise in the gap.
Silver 4H chart 8:38PM EDT 10/14/2012
silver 10152012 4h chart
Fan Yang CMT is a forex trader, analyst, educator and Chief Technical Strategist for FXTimes – provider of Forex News, Analysis, Education, Videos, Charts, and other trading resources.
Information and opinions contained in this report are for educational purposes only and do not constitute an investment advice. While the information contained herein was obtained from sources believed to be reliable, author does not guarantee its accuracy or completeness. FXTimes will not accept liability for any loss of profit or damage which may arise directly, indirectly or consequently from use of or reliance on the trading set-ups or any accompanying chart analysis.
Copyright FX Times All rights reserved.

Gold Slides Below Failed Wedge; Silver Completes Double Top


Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Silver comment from the guys at Casey research

#Silver closed at the $30.72 spot...down a dime.  The roll-overs out of the September delivery month are now in full swing...and once these were removed from the volume data, the real trading amounted to only about 15,000 contracts.
The dollar index opened around the 81.60 mark...and then wandered around either side of unchanged...but finished up about 5 basis points on the day at 81.65.  Nothing to see here, folks...please move along.
The gold stocks pretty much followed the gold price around during the New York trading session.  There were trading mostly around unchanged...but were slightly in the black until about 12:45 p.m.
From there they began to head south...and really began selling off once the Comex closed at 1:30 p.m. Eastern.  The stocks closed just off their lows...with the HUI finishing down 1.33% on the day.
The silver stocks finished lower on the day as well, although there was the odd green arrow amongst the ones that I follow.  Nick Laird's Silver Sentiment Index closed down 1.09%.
(Click on image to enlarge)
As the August delivery month winds down, the CME Daily Delivery Report showed that 18 gold and 83 silver contracts were posted for delivery tomorrow.  In silver, it was Jefferies and ABN Amro as the only two short/issuers...and the Bank of Nova Scotia was the biggest long/stopper with 76 contracts to be received on Wednesday.  The link to yesterday's Issuers and Stoppers Report is here.

There were no reported changes in GLD yesterday...but over at SLV they reported that 1,453,740 troy ounces of silver were withdrawn.  Based on the price action of the previous week, it should be obvious that this silver was desperately needed elsewhere.
Silver should be pouring into SLV, just like gold is pouring into GLD...but that's not happening.  Since August 15th, SLV has only had 1.36 million ounces of silver deposited on at net basis.  During the same period, GLD has had about 911,600 ounces deposited.  My back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that around 5.6 million ounces is still owned to SLV over that same period of time...and that's over and above the 13.7 million ounces that is still owed to SLV by way of the current short position.
One small item that I missed in my Saturday column was a minor increase in the silver holdings over at Sprott's Physical Silver Trust on Friday.  Their website showed that they received another 30,000 ounces.  Nick Laird and I are looking for about one million ounces more.  If it has been received, it certainly hasn't been reported on Sprott's website as of yet.
There was no sales report from the U.S. Mint.
The Comex-approved depositories only received one good delivery bar of silver on Friday... tipping the scales at 958.100 troy ounces...but they shipped 949,571 troy ounces out the door to parts unknown.  The link to that action is here.


See the whole article here:  Ed Steer's Gold & Silver Daily - Intensely Curious, Focused on Facts

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Monday, August 27, 2012

Defense Spending Will Continue To Grow In Spite of Automatic Cuts Set By BCA | Mercatus

http://mercatus.org/sites/default/files/BCA-Sequester-Chart-580_1.jpg

Projections outlining the future path of the defense base budget are depicted by combining the red and purple regions, which represent the defense base budget if spending is capped under levels stated in the BCA. Taking away the red region and leaving the purple region shows the projected base budget if sequestration occurs in tandem with the BCA caps. And, lastly, adding the blue region to the red and purple combined accounts for future base and war spending.

Defense Spending Will Continue To Grow In Spite of Automatic Cuts Set By BCA | Mercatus

Thursday, August 09, 2012

#Charts: #China’s residential #housing starts continued to fall

Despite a somewhat better sentiment in China’s real estate market in the recent months on the back of stimulus hope, residential housing starts continued to fall.

For January-July, residential housing starts declined by 13.4% compared with the same period a year ago, down from –10.7% for January-June.  If we derive the year-on-year growth for the month of July only from the accumulative data, residential housing starts fell 30.4%, worst number on record apparently.
image
image
Source: National Bureau of Statistics



Charts: China’s residential housing starts continued to fall

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David Rosenberg: The Coming Negative Export Shock | PRAGMATIC CAPITALISM

The Coming Negative Export Shock

Click here to find out more!
David Rosenberg has an indicator for us here that isn’t too mainstream.  He says the correlation between exports and new orders could prove prescient in forecasting a recession in the US:
“I think that there may be a time, before too long, when we will walk into the office to find that they US prints a negative GDP reading on the back of a negative export shock that does not appear to be in any forecast – let alone the consensus.  Look at the pattern of ISM export orders:
- April 59
- May 53.5
- June 47.5
- July 46.5
This is called a pattern.  And this is a level that coincided with the two prior recessions.  As the chart below vividly illustrates, there is a significant 81% correlation between annual growth in total US exports and the ISM new orders index (with a 4 month lag).  So either the market has already priced this in or it is going to end up coming as a very big surprise….”

Source: Gluskin Sheff

David Rosenberg: The Coming Negative Export Shock | PRAGMATIC CAPITALISM

The MasterMetals Blog

Sunday, August 05, 2012

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Daily chart: Mapping #Judaism | The Economist

JUDAISM is enjoying an unexpected revival, according to a special report to be published in this week’s Economist. The map and chart below show where the biggest Jewish populations live and how this has changed over the past century

Daily chart

Mapping Judaism

Jul 25th 2012, 13:32 by The Economist online

Mapping the world's Jewish population and migration patterns
JUDAISM is enjoying an unexpected revival, according to a special report to be published in this week’s Economist. The map and chart below show where the biggest Jewish populations live and how this has changed over the past century. In 1939, Jews numbered 16.5m people, up from 10.6m in 1900. By the end of the second world war, the Nazis had wiped out one-third of them, sweeping away a thousand years of Jewish civilisation in central and eastern Europe. The death toll might have been even higher, but a flurry of pogroms that started 60 years earlier across the then-tsarist empire had sent waves of Jewish emigrants westward. By the time Hitler struck, some 6m Jews were safe in North and South America and in Britain, with 3m more living in the Soviet Union. From 1948, most of the Jews of north Africa and the Levant emigrated. The break-up of the Soviet Union brought the latest big wave of Jewish migration to Israel in the early 1990s.



Daily chart: Mapping Judaism | The Economist

Friday, June 29, 2012

#Iranian‬ ‪#sanctions‬: major shifts in global ‪#oil‬ supply landscape look inevitable #MasterMetals @PlattsOil

Iranian oil imports into Japan, China and South Korea ('000 b/d)

: : major shifts in global supply landscape look inevitable



Twitter / MasterMetals: RT @PlattsOil: #Iranian #s



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Tracking social media: The mood of the market | The Economist

the classical economists instructed, rely on information. But what if there is too much of it, not too little? 

Tracking social media

The mood of the market

Jun 28th 2012, 12:31 by K.N.C. | LONDON

MARKETS, the classical economists instructed, rely on information. But what if there is too much of it, not too little?
The web and social-networking platforms have resulted in an explosion of words. Many firms apply artificial intelligence technology to get the gist, and use that as a trading signal. One study in 2010 by researchers at Indiana University analyzed millions of tweets to predict the movement of the stock market three days later with an 87% accuracy. Such success has unleashed a new fashion for Wall Street quants to plug so-called "sentiment analysis" of social media into their massive models.
Until now these indicators have been fairly blunt, usually tracking a handful of companies on a two-dimensional scale of positive or negative sentiment. But on June 25th Thomson Reuters unleashed no fewer than 18,864 new indices, updated each minute. The system, developed by MarketPsych, a start-up in California, can analyze as many as 55,000 news sites and 4.5m social media sites, blogs and tweets (though on an everyday basis, the number it crunches will be much smaller). The indices quantify emotional states like optimism, gloom, joy, fear, anger—even things like innovation, litigation and conflict. And it does it across a slew of assets: 40 equity sectors, 29 currencies, 22 types of energy and materials, 12 agricultural commodities and 119 countries.
Parsing tweets to measure "innovation" or "litigation" might seem of little value, even if it can be measured accurately—a big if. The techniques of natural language processing are embryonic and highly imperfect. Tweets for example, are often ironic or sarcastic, which humans immediately understand but computers do not. However, presuming that the indices actually denote what they purport to measure, they are not so much meant for a person to use directly, but for hefty computer algorithms to factor in on a continuous basis. In that sense, relative changes over time may have merit.
This may help prevent what is known as "model crowding" or "quantagion" (a neologism of "quant" and  "contagion"), explains Rich Brown of Thomson Reuters. The idea is that many funds' models rely on similar underlying data, so that when one melts-down, they all do, as happened in August 2007. And because everyone trades on mostly the same signals, the effects get exaggerated. Hence, quant investors are keen for new data sources to add to their models, to give them a unique trading strategy.
The new indices associated with an asset or country cost around $1,000 a month and go north from there. Yet are they useful? The verdict is out. Take the index that is informally called the "Bubbleometer" (pictured below), which is a measure of "speculative" conversations among investors over the web and social media platforms.

When the Bubbleometer is compared against the Standard & Poor's 500 Index between September 2009 and May 2012, it mostly follows the big swoops. But examined closely, one sees the Bubbleometer act erratically. For example, in late 2009 and early 2010 it showed speculative sentiment cooling just as prices were rising. In Spring 2010 it was first a lagging indicator that share prices would rise, then a leading indicator they would retreat. At midyear, sentiment and prices were inversely correlated. In autumn 2010 the Bubbleometer held steady within a narrow band, while the index jumped almost 15%.
Of course, this is not to say that a bit of clever maths won't uncover interesting patterns that are not visible to the human eye. It is useful measure of "bubbleocity," stresses Mr Brown of Thomson Reuters.
Successes from harnessing online sentiment analysis remain to be seen. One fund that famously began trading on Twitter signals in 2011, Derwent Capital in London, recently closed its fund (it plans to offer the metrics for free to retail investors who use its trading platform later this year). Similarly, MarketPsych, the firm that compiles Thomson Reuters' sentiment indices, formerly used the data for an in-house fund that has since been shuttered as well.
True, the value of data or an index can often be better exploited by third parties than the firm that cobbled it together—no one would think that Dow Jones would be filthy rich if it kept the industrial average to itself. However, it raises eyebrows that the firms capable of measuring market sentiment are willing to provide that data to others rather then keep it to itself. If it were so valuable, why would they make it available at all? The telling is in the using: let's see how investment performance improves or deteriorates with yet another signal on which to base trading decisions. After all, the classic economists aspired for perfect information.

 See the article online here: Tracking social media: The mood of the market | The Economist

Thursday, June 21, 2012

The Most Important Chart In #Europe Is Getting Dramatically Better - Business Insider #Italy #Spain

The Most Important Chart In Europe Is Getting Dramatically Better
Simone Foxman

Yields on Italian and Spanish bonds are dropping fast this morning, after a bond auction in Spain saw decent demand from investors.

Borrowing costs remained high at auction; for example, yields on two-year notes rose from 2.069 percent last month to 4.706 percent. However, the fact that primary market borrowing costs were below where yields in the secondary market--they started at over 5 percent today--suggests that the bearish reaction to the Spanish bank bailout deal might be overblown.

We have argued in the past that yields on two-year bonds in Spain and Italy may prove the most important data points in Europe, since two-year borrowing costs take into account the effects of the European Central Bank's two liquidity-providing long-term refinancing operations. With Spain under fire from investors after its bank bailout, indicators of Spanish government following stress have become urgent. See our full reasoning here >

Yields on Spanish two-year notes have fallen a dramatic 28 basis points today. This seems to be continuing a trend that began early this week, Take a look at 2-year notes today:
spanish 2 year yields
Spanish 2 year yields

Read more here: The Most Important Chart In Europe Is Getting Dramatically Better - Business Insider

Monday, June 18, 2012

David Rosenberg Charts - Business Insider

David Rosenberg outlines why the economy still has a long way to go to improve.
 



David Rosenberg Charts - Business Insider

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Saturday, June 16, 2012

Peak Monthly #Inflation In 1945 Hungary: 12,950,000,000,000,000% And Other Hyperinflationary Facts | ZeroHedge

Peak Monthly Inflation In 1945 Hungary: 12,950,000,000,000,000% And Other Hyperinflationary Facts

By Tyler Durden
Created 06/15/2012 - 12:45
[1]
Submitted by Tyler Durden [1] on 06/15/2012 12:45 -0400


For some reason, whenever people want to make a historical example of a hyperinflationary period, they always bring up the Weimar Republic, aka Germany in 1920-1923. Yet with a highest monthly inflation of just under 30,000%, Weimar was a true walk in the park compared to the 309,000,000% monthly inflation in 1992-1994 Serbia, but especially to the 12,950,000,000,000,000% inflation that Hungarians had to deal with in the aftermath of WWII. For these and more  comparative examples of hyperinflation, particularly relevant now that the entire world is rumored (for now) to be getting ready to print, see below.




See the article on zerohedge.com: Peak Monthly Inflation In 1945 Hungary: 12,950,000,000,000,000% And Other Hyprinflationary Facts | ZeroHedge

Friday, June 15, 2012

Meanwhile In #Switzerland... | ZeroHedge

The entire bond curve through the 5 year point is now negative (for the first time ever). At this rate, courtesy of the FX peg and the SNB's free put option, whereby EURs are converted into CHFs at a furious pace even as the facade of a collapsing Eurozone is itself crumbling, and the proceeds are use to buy Swiss bonds ever further into negative territory, we may soon have an entire bond curve trading at negative territory. Which, paradoxically, would lead to that Keynesian wet dream: the more debt Switzerland issues, the more money it would make courtesy of negative interest expense, literally, and the faster it would pay down its debt. Curiously, this may not be a bad offset to losses that the SNB is currently experiencing due to its currency peg. And some thought bizarro world was a sitcom construct.

Chart: BBG


Meanwhile In Switzerland... | ZeroHedge


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The Diminishing Returns Of Central Planning, And Why More Printing Would Have No Impact | ZeroHedge

 
Because it now appears that only an absolute currency devaluation would work, not a relative one. What is another way of saying this: a global devaluation of all currencies relative to some benchmark... say gold

... and what happens when the market realizes that suddenly, Syriza not winning the Greek elections is the downside case as it would mean no coordinated central bank intervention. Great job central planners - you have just shot yourself in the foot once again.

The Diminishing Returns Of Central Planning, And Why More Printing Would Have No Impact

Tyler Durden's picture


Now that all the rage is now just the NEW QE, but global coordinated NEW QE, it would make sense to observe the impact the last three episodes of quantitative easing, QE1, QE2 and Twist, have had on the market. And more importantly, whether such impact is rising, dropping, or staying the same. Well, as the following chart from BofA shows, we may be lucky if there is any favorable impact on risk assets following the announcement of more easing, and incidentally perhaps global easing is what is necessary (if not sufficient) now that the devaluation of the US dollar has become an exercise in futility. Because it now appears that only an absolute currency devaluation would work, not a relative one. What is another way of saying this: a global devaluation of all currencies relative to some benchmark... say gold. Most importantly, the only question now is how long before the entire "global intervention rumor" is faded, and what happens when the market realizes that suddenly, Syriza not winning the Greek elections is the downside case as it would mean no coordinated central bank intervention. Great job central planners - you have just shot yourself in the foot once again.

The full thoughts of BofA:
There are low rates, and then there are low rates

Of course, rates are already quite low. But it matters why they are low. Right now, much is due to a flight to safety; fear is not a good environment for growth or market rallies. Replacing that fear with a policy commitment to further support the recovery should be a net positive for the outlook. Indeed, this confidence channel is an important one: the Fed can put a floor under sentiment and prevent a selffulfilling negative spiral like what immediately followed the collapse of Lehman. Moreover, QE3 should price out deflation and “Japanification” fears.

One counter to these potential benefits is that low rates hurt savers. While true in isolation, the plausible alternative is not higher rates. It is an even deeper economic quagmire, even more negative sentiment, and likely similarly low rates.  No one — savers or otherwise — would benefit from that situation.

The law of diminishing returns

The other counter is that QE3 will have less benefit per dollar than earlier programs. That might well be correct — a recent San Francisco Fed study lends support to that view (Chart 7) — and Bernanke and Yellen both acknowledged that risk recently. But it is worth exploring the reasons why.

QE1 may have had a large effect because of nonlinearities that increase in size. If so, that argues for a larger QE3 program (and against a small extension of Twist). QE1 also improved market functioning during a crisis and signaled easy policy for a while. Forward guidance has since usurped the latter effect. Market functioning was much less of a problem during QE2 or Twist; if fears of European contagion lead US market liquidity to falter, however, QE3 could have larger effects.
Or, as the chart actually implies, more easing would have no impact whatsoever...


Read the article online here: The Diminishing Returns Of Central Planning, And Why More Printing Would Have No Impact | ZeroHedge

Thursday, May 24, 2012

FT Alphaville » Germany has all but turned Japanese

Germany has all but turned Japanese


Here’s the spread between the 30 year bund and its 30 year Japanese counterpart over the past 12 months. It’s just about ceased to exist.


Read the rest of the post online here: FT Alphaville » Germany has all but turned Japanese

Monday, May 21, 2012

Monday, May 14, 2012

Chart of the week: which way next for China’s trade surplus? | beyondbrics | FT.com

Chart of the week: which way next for China’s trade surplus?

 Another month, another alarming statistic from China. This month, amid all the other gloom, came the trade surplus.
It jumped from $5.3bn in March to $18.4bn in April. Not the right direction, certainly. But is there cause for alarm? And what is the long term pattern of China’s trade, anyway? Chart of the week takes a look.
...
China’s stated policy aim is to boost its domestic consumption and move away from the export-led growth of the last few decades. This implies a big increase to imports. So the recent April figure was rightly greeted with a bit of a groan.
But if we look at the long-term trend, the picture is quite different. We have chosen to focus on the trade surplus as a percentage of imports (on a 12 month rolling basis to remove seasonal swings).
The chart below shows two lines, the red line (measured on the left axis) shows the trade surplus. The level in April 2012 is near that of April 2007 – $166bn compared to $207bn. ...
 the blue line shows how the trade surplus has fared as proportion of imports. In other words – what do imports need to do to make up ground? And although the pattern of rise and fall is similar, there is a different story. The import shortfall goes from over 20 per cent in 2007, rises to 30 per cent in 2009, but then falls and keeps trending lower. It ends at less than 10 per cent.

In other words, imports have less catching up to do relative to their size. Imports and exports have both grown so that the relative difference is getting smaller.
This is because the economy as a whole is getting much bigger, quickly. Comparing a monthly trade surplus of $20bn four years ago isn’t the same as a trade surplus of $20bn last month. The absolute sum may be the same, but the impact is smaller.
In fact, as a percentage of GDP, China’s trade surplus has gone from around 7.5 per cent in 2007 to just over 2 per cent in 2011.

Read the whole article online here: 

Chart of the week: which way next for China’s trade surplus? | beyondbrics | News and views on emerging markets from the Financial Times – FT.com


Thursday, April 26, 2012

Gross Domestic Product Growth in China _Stratfor Graphic of the Day

Gross Domestic Product Growth in China - Stratfor Graphic of the Day

Analysis
Over the past decade, the average gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in central Chinese provinces increased fivefold. After the "Rise of Central China" plan -- intended to develop inland industry and infrastructure and eventually develop an inland consumer base -- was inaugurated in 2004, every central province's economy experienced double-digit growth per year (often higher than 20 percent), with the exception 2009, when the fallout from the global recession briefly brought China's economy to a halt. Inland China's rising overall GDP and GDP per capita testify to Beijing's at least partial success in modernizing and connecting the region to the national economy. Nonetheless, growth within the region remains uneven, and despite progress, the average GDP per capita still lags significantly behind coastal provinces. In 2011, average GDP per capita along the coast reached 52,838 yuan (roughly $8,300), 44 percent higher than in inland provinces.

Read more: Gross Domestic Product Growth in China | Stratfor

Read the rest of the article online, along with the full graph.

Gross Domestic Product Growth in China

Saturday, February 04, 2012

State of the State Funds | Institutional Investor

The State of the Sovereign Wealth Funds SWFs

TheCityUK has published its annual update on sovereign wealth funds

From TheCityUK via Institutional Investor

02 Feb 2012 -

TheCityUK has published its annual update on sovereign wealth funds. And, as per usual, it's loaded with informative graphs and charts. Here are some of the highlights.


By the end of 2012, SWFs should have over $5.2 trillion in AUM:

If we add in some of the other "sovereign" investment vehicles, the size of this group would be much, much bigger.

And sovereign wealth funds are more popular than ever. More funds have been created since 2000 than in all the years beforehand.

Download the whole TheCityUK annual update on sovereign wealth funds here.

State of the State Funds | Institutional Investor

Monday, January 23, 2012

Investor Sentiment: Is This the End of the Road for the Rally? | ZeroHedge

Investor Sentiment: Is This the End of the Road for the Rally?
zerohedge.com
January 22, 2012

The "dumb money" indicator has become extremely bullish (bear signal), and this is what one would expect with rising prices. The higher prices go the more bulls that are recruited. But is it the end of the road for the rally? Not necessarily so. In 1995, 2003, 2009, and Q4 2010/Q1 2011 we saw the phenomenon that I have dubbed "it takes bulls to make a bull market". It is a market characterized by rising prices and excessive bullishness. In the case of 1995, 2003, 2009, the excessive bullishness and multi-month rally seem to be warranted as the markets were bouncing back from steep losses or a prolong period of consolidation (1995). The Q4 2010/ Q1 2011 version of this phenomenon was a QE2 induced feeding frenzy. With investors taking their cues from the Federal Reserve and European Central Bank, the current market environment resembles Q4 2010/ Q1 2011. For now, we need to respect this dynamic as we could be witnessing another melt up. The bulls have the ball in their court and are on the cusp of turning this recent price move into a multi-month barn burner.

The “Dumb Money” indicator (see figure 1) looks for extremes in the data from 4 different groups of investors who historically have been wrong on the market: 1) Investors Intelligence; 2) MarketVane; 3) American Association of Individual Investors; and 4) the put call ratio. This indicator shows extreme bullishness.

Figure 1. “Dumb Money”/ weekly

Figure 2 is a weekly chart of the SP500 with the InsiderScore “entire market” value in the lower panel. From the InsiderScore weekly report: "Insider trading volume was seasonally thin last week, the result of most insiders being locked-up and prohibited from trading until after their companies' Q4'11 earnings announcements, as well as the market holiday."

Figure 2. InsiderScore “Entire Market” value/ weekly

Figure 3 is a weekly chart of the SP500. The indicator in the lower panel measures all the assets in the Rydex bullish oriented equity funds divided by the sum of assets in the bullish oriented equity funds plus the assets in the bearish oriented equity funds. When the indicator is green, the value is low and there is fear in the market; this is where market bottoms are forged. When the indicator is red, there is complacency in the market. There are too many bulls and this is when market advances stall. Currently, the value of the indicator is 65.09%. Values less than 50% are associated with market bottoms. Values greater than 58% are associated with market tops.

Figure 3. Rydex Total Bull v. Total Bear/ weekly



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