A Mystifying Rate Cut By the Reserve Bank of Australia

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on May 7, 2013. Click here to read the entire piece.) Tonight (morning of May 7th in Australia), the Reserve Bank of Australia cut its interest rate to 2.75% whereas the consensus assumed that rates would stay steady at 3.0%. While the … Read more

Already Time to Shift Into Neutral on the Australian Dollar

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on April 12, 2013. Click here to read the entire piece.) Next week on May 6th (May 7th in Australia), the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) will make its next monetary policy decision. The Australian dollar has shown marked weakness going into … Read more

Poor Employment Report Only Slows Australian Dollar’s Breakout

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on April 12, 2013. Click here to read the entire piece.) Last week, we learned that the Australian trade balance for February was much better than expected, -178M AUD versus expectations for -1B AUD and -1.2B AUD for January. Additionally, retail sales … Read more

A Concentrated Way to Play Rapid Price Appreciation In The California Housing Market

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on April 9, 2013. Click here to read the entire piece.) TRI Pointe Homes (TPH) is a 4-year old company based in Irvine, California that on January 31, 2013 became the first homebuilder to go IPO since 2004. The Starwood Fund, managed … Read more

Week of Major Currency Shifts Flips Me Bullish Australian and British Currencies

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on April 7, 2013. Click here to read the entire piece.) {snip} The market seemed to convulse on the notion that the Fed could actually end asset purchases but seemed to ignore the conditional of a much improved labor market and improving … Read more