More Rate Cut Pressure As Australian Dollar’s Multi-Year Weakness Fails to Curb Trade Deficit

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on April 2, 2015. Click here to read the entire piece.) A drop in the Australian dollar (FXA) toward a fresh six-year low has not stopped Australia’s trade balance from worsening. {snip} Source: The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Source for currency … Read more

Surprising Divergences Tugging At the Australian Dollar

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on March 31, 2015. Click here to read the entire piece.) Over the weekend another wave of rumors about plans for economic stimulus in China made the rounds. These rumors were credited for helping to drive China’s Shanghai index toward a 7-year … Read more

Trying Not to Outsmart the Dollar Trend

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on March 31, 2015. Click here to read the entire piece.) {snip} This quote was buried in footnote #14 of Janet Yellen’s speech at a research conference called “The New Normal Monetary Policy” sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. … Read more

The Bad and the Good News In the Housing Market’s Worsening Labor Shortage

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on November 10, 2014. Click here to read the entire piece.) The bursting of the housing bubble destroyed the supply chain at several critical junctures. For example, employment in the industry collapsed. While the overall unemployment rate in the industry has returned … Read more

A Potentially Important Shift In Income Demographics for Home Loans

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on September 29, 2014. Click here to read the entire piece.) I have written before that home builders have focused on building for higher income buyers and mortgage financing has been restricted to the well-off. It turns out things are not quite … Read more