ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
Several months ago, I had the opportunity to “talk shop” with a truck driver who specializes household moves. I will call him “Bob.” When Bob discovered that I write a blog dealing with trading and investing in financial markets, he asked me for my forecast for the economy. I did not have anything good to … Read more
The risk of holding TBT, the Pro Shares UltraShort 20+ Year Treasury, rose significantly last week. The sudden surge in oil prices in response to the rebellion in Libya has put the double-dip recession back into play and once again lodged it into the frontal lobes of market players. Recession fears bring fresh affinity for … Read more
Buyers are again lifting the stock market from its intra-day lows and providing some potential clues on where to draw the bull/bear lines from a technical perspective. The case for a bullish setup is relatively strong: Three days of high volume selling is washing out sellers. 50-day moving average (DMA) essentially successfully retested, leaving primary … Read more
The stock market has already started cooling off from overbought conditions, but the weakening euro, increasing bond yields, and widening spreads have markets on edge yet again. After listening to a Planet Money segment on the financial problems in Spain called “A Theme Park, An Airport And The Next Banking Crisis” by Chana Joffe-Walt, I … Read more
Last week, I claimed that the market is not yet overbought and that any corrections in the short-term will most likely be shallow. Without some specific and new catalyst, traders and investors, especially the ones who missed this latest rally, will treat pullbacks as golden buying opportunities. Moreover, I noted how, as expected, many analysts … Read more
According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), its 33 member countries will almost double government borrowing from 2007 to 2011 to the tune of $19 trillion. In the face of this ramp in borrowing (and spending) bond investors are supposed should sit back and calmly continue to absorb all the sovereign requests … Read more
“It’s the main question that keeps me and my colleagues at the MPC up at night. That’s why in our last set of forecasts….we stressed there are upside risks. The slack in the economy is not pushing down on inflation the way we’d like…core inflation is higher in the UK; it’s not dragging down like … Read more
For the past few months, I pestered my youngest brother to write a review of his cogent 2009 analysis of the housing market. In that post, he predicted housing would bottom in April, 2010 and as late as 2013 in a worst case scenario. He has finally produced the follow-up, and I post it below. … Read more
“…the Republicans, I think, have been cutting taxes with borrowed money, and the Democrats have been spending with borrowed money. They agree only on the borrowed money. And the system cannot take that…We are now at a state where, excluding World War II, we are in the worst shape of the relationship between borrowing capacity … Read more
I am far from bullish on the financial markets, but it is getting harder and harder to stay bearish given the accelerating negative buzz about deflation, double-dips, and, most importantly, all the talk about the uncertainty that is supposedly paralyzing the entire country, preventing business owners from operating the engines of American commerce and preventing … Read more