A Weekend Rate Cut In China Fails to Stir the Australian Dollar; RBA Now On Tap

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on March 2, 2014. Click here to read the entire piece.) On Saturday, the People’s Bank of China cut its benchmark interest rates by 0.25 percentage points (25 basis points). Yet, as of the open of Asian trading, the Australian dollar (FXA) … Read more

Australia’s Heating Housing Market Pressures Monetary Policy

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on February 11, 2015. Click here to read the entire piece.) The Australian Bureau of Statistics released its December, 2014 data on housing finance in Australia. The data show that first-time home buyers continue to decline as a percentage of all dwellings … Read more

The Commodity Crash Playbook: A Long Overdue Rewrite and Revision

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on January 5, 2015. Click here to read the entire piece.) Three and a half years ago, I started a series that I called “the Commodities Crash Playbook” in an effort to take advantage of an investing and economic theory promoted by … Read more

Parabolic Moves in the Ruble, Turkish Lira May Foreshadow the Same for the Australian Dollar

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on December 17, 2014. Click here to read the entire piece.) Currency markets have been rocked with increasingly extreme moves in risk-bearing currencies like the Russian ruble (USD/RUB). Last week, the Russian central bank hiked interest rates from 9.5% to 10.5%. This … Read more

A Minor Intervention Scare for the Australian Dollar

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on November 13, 2014. Click here to read the entire piece.) On November 13th (in the morning in Australia), Christopher Kent, an Assistant Governor at the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), delivered a speech discussing business cycles in Australia. The big news … Read more