US-China trade war deal reaches first anniversary as bilateral mistrust hits ‘all-time high’

[unable to retrieve full-text content]One year after signing the phase one trade deal with the US, China remains far behind in its commitment to buy more American goods, though the agreement has been a vital sticking plaster in a fast deteriorating bilateral relationship, experts said.The world’s two largest economies signed the deal on January 15 last year, effectively calling a ceasefire in a trade war that saw tariffs slapped on billions of...

What To Do After Your Spouse Dies: A Checklist

The wife of a friend of mine passed away recently. He’s going through the grief and loneliness you’d expect after being married 53 years. And now he has a new challenge, one I’ve seen with so many other widows and widowers—dealing with the long list of legal and financial items that come up after the death of a spouse. The grief of losing a loved one obscures many of the mundane tasks required to settle your spouse’s estate. Here’s a checklist...

U.S. International Investment Position, Third Quarter 2020

The U.S. net international investment position, the difference between U.S. residents' foreign financial assets and liabilities, was –$13.95 trillion at the end of the third quarter of 2020, according to statistics released by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). Assets totaled $29.41 trillion and liabilities were $43.36 trillion. At the end of the second quarter, the net investment position was –$13.08 trillion (Table 1). The...

Markets Quiet but Yield Pressures Weigh on Stimulus Prospect

Nasdaq relative weakness FX flat Nikkei 0.85% Dax 0.50% UST 10Y 1.11 Oil $52 Gold $1854/oz. BTCUSD $38000/oz. Asia and the EU EUR GDP -5% US USD Weekly Jobless Claims 8:30 A quiet and uneventful night in the markets so far with Nasdaq futures markedly lower than the other indices while FX remained range bound with little news flow to move prices. The most pronounced divergence today is in equities with Nasdaq lower by 30 basis points while...

Stock market surge everywhere, record Gamma, Treasury bonds falling, U.S. Dollar reversal

Stock market surge everywhere Stock markets around the world – particularly in Asia – continue to surge. The average country’s stock index is 18% above its 200 dma! This is the highest reading in over a decade: *I calculated this average using the following countries’ indices: U.S., Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, HK, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore,...

January 12 COVID-19 Test Results; Record 7-Day Deaths

Note: It is possible the 7-day average cases is nearing a peak. I'm looking forward to not posting this data in a few months. The US is now averaging close to 2 million tests per day. Based on the experience of other countries, for adequate test-and-trace (and isolation) to reduce infections, the percent positive needs to be under 5% (probably close to 1%), so the US has far too many daily cases - and percent positive - to do effective...

A Big Jump In Gas Prices Pushes Overall CPI Up 0.4 Percent In December

(This is a compilation of Dean Baker’s quick-take analysis over Twitter. Follow @DeanBaker13 on Twitter to get his quick-take analysis of government data immediately upon release.) The pandemic has led to a real flip in price trends. Rent, medical care, and education had been sectors with higher inflation. This is no longer the case; now food and cars see the highest inflation. This will likely flip back when the pandemic fades, although...

Five “Interesting” Financial Tidbits

Is that a red flashing light on the control panel of "the man behind the curtain"? Among the many "interesting" (a safe word to use in perilous times) signs and portents swirling around us, here are five financial tidbits "of interest." What do they mean? The answer is of course nothing. There are many "interesting" things with no discernible meaning. Being "interesting" is enough. 1. Just...

Natural Gas Slumps Despite Bigger-Than-Expected Supply Drawdown, Polar Vortex

Natural gas futures slumped on Thursday, despite a bigger-than-expected supply drawdown and the coming polar vortex that is expected to blanket North America in frigid temperatures. Although prices dropped more than 1% toward the end of the trading week, market analysts are still optimistic about natural gas due to a myriad of bullish factors. February natural gas futures tumbled $0.036, or 1.34%, to $2.653 per million British thermal units...

US-China trade war deal reaches first anniversary as bilateral mistrust hits ‘all-time high’

[unable to retrieve full-text content]One year after signing the phase one trade deal with the US, China remains far behind in its commitment to buy more American goods, though the agreement has been a vital sticking plaster in a fast deteriorating bilateral relationship, experts said.The world’s two largest economies signed the deal on January 15 last year, effectively calling a ceasefire in a trade war that saw tariffs slapped on billions of...

6/1/21: BRIC: Composite Economic Indicators: 4Q 2020

Manufacturing PMIs for BRIC economies for 4Q 2020 are discussed here: https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/01/4121-bric-manufacturing-pmis-4q-2020.html.Services PMIs are covered here: https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/01/6121-bric-services-pmis-4q-2020.html.Now, Composite PMIs:Brazil Composite PMI rose from 51.6 in 3Q 2020 to 54.4 in 4Q 2020, marking second consecutive quarter of > 50.0 readings. Average 4 quarters PMI stands at...

Curious Cat Investing and Economics Blog

This post lists the 20 publicly traded companies with the largest market capitalization as of today. Since my November 2017 list of the 20 most valuable stocks the value of 2 companies increased by more than $150 billion and 4 companies value decreased by over $100 billion. In the 20 most valuable companies list there are 13 USA companies, 4 Chinese companies and 1 each for Korea, Netherlands and Switzerland. The remaining 15 companies with...

Weighing the Week Ahead: Can Earnings Growth Justify Current Stock Prices?

We have an array of interesting data in the week ahead including inflation news, more employment numbers, and sentiment from consumers and small businesses. Most importantly we have the start of earnings season. Despite this, the political story will dominate, at least for a bit longer. While this is newsworthy, it is not the key element for investors. What best depicts this challenge to find the right focus? Let us turn to Chance the...

U.S. Workforce: December 2020 Update

[unable to retrieve full-text content] We've updated our monthly workforce analysis to include last Friday's Employment Report for December. The unemployment rate remained at 6.7%, and the number of new nonfarm jobs (a relatively volatile number subject to extensive revisions) came in at -140K.

Inflation Was Sooo 1970s! Will It Roar Back in the 2020s?

Inflation I: Post-Pandemic Worry. I was an early believer in “disinflation.” I first used that word, which means falling inflation, in my June 1981 commentary titled “Well on the Road to Disinflation.” The Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rate was 9.6% that month. I predicted that Federal Reserve Chair Paul Volcker would succeed in breaking the inflationary uptrend of the 1960s and 1970s, which he did. Nevertheless, throughout my career,...

Trump Does Right On H-1B Reform

The Ireland Event

Daily reported new Covid cases, Ireland, through Jan. 7, 2021 For the past year, I’ve been consumed with how Covid numbers are used/manipulated to create political narratives. From China to WHO to don’t-test-don’t-tell to Covid Trutherism in all its forms … that’s been the windmill I’ve tilted at for almost 12 months now. Last week I became consumed by a new twist on all this – Covid numbers that were being largely ignored. Insane...

Federal Open Market Committee announces approval of updates to its Statement on Longer-Run Goals and Monetary Policy Strategy

Following an extensive review that included numerous public events across the country, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) on Thursday announced the unanimous approval of updates to its Statement on Longer-Run Goals and Monetary Policy Strategy, which articulates its approach to monetary policy and serves as the foundation for its policy actions. The updates reflect changes in the economy over the past decade and how policymakers are...

Peak Euphoria & Bat Shit Crazy Markets

[t]here is no denying that there’s been a shift in market structure over the past few years. Whether it be in the proliferation of free trading platforms, the rise in market share of passive investment strategies, or the ease with which social media can fuel speculative manias further, it does feel like something is different. – FT Alphaville Yikes, “it’s different this time.”   Same words to rationalize another bubble,  different rodeo....

December inflation: real aggregate wages fall as real average wages rise due to compositional effects

- by New Deal democratConsumer inflation typically rises as expansions continue, and declines once recessions start. Once a recovery begins, inflation typically steadies again. While the pandemic has affected both consumer demand and the supply chain, overall the paradigm should still apply. With that in mind, let’s take a look at December’s report.For the past 40 years, recessions had typically happened when CPI less energy costs (red) had...

Waiting for the breakout

Mid-week market update: It’s difficult to make a coherent technical analysis comment on the day of an FOMC meeting, but the stock market remains in a holding pattern. While the S&P 500 remains in an uptrend (blue line), it has been consolidating sideways since late November and early December.  Until we see either an upside breakout or downside breakdown out of the trading range (grey area), it’s difficult to make a definitive...

On Negative Rates

Negative interest rates – weird, right? In the five thousand years that interest rates have been recorded, they’ve never hit zero before.  Today, there’s some $15 trillion in negative-yielding bonds — admittedly down from $17 trillion last year, but still a very substantial fraction of the global bond market outside the US. At first it was only shorter bonds that were negative, but today German bunds are negative all the way out to 30 years....

Markets are Subdued Despite Impeachment and Record Chinese Trade Surplus

Overview:  The capital markets are becalmed today. There does not appear to be much reaction to the news that the House of Representatives impeached President Trump an unprecedented second time with greater bipartisan support than previously (10 GOP voted with the Democratic majority).  Nor has there been a significant reaction to Italy's political turmoil, where a small but key minority party withdrew from the governing coalition.  Most Asia...

First of Many Cancellations: PGA Strips Trump of the 2022 PGA

First of ManyIn the first of many cancellations to come PGA will strip Trump Bedminster of 2022 PGA Championship.The PGA of America will strip Donald Trump of the 2022 PGA Championship, which is scheduled to be held at Trump National Bedminster golf club in New Jersey. In a blistering column that says the golf world must sever all ties with Trump, Golfweek’s Eamon Lynch said the PGA has been debating for two years the need to move the major...

2:00PM Water Cooler 1/14/2021

By Lambert Strether of Corrente. Patient readers, more shortly. Essay later. –lambert UPDATE All done. No essay; but see Ritholtz (“What is Wrong with These People”) and the Financial Times (“America’s political crisis”), with my comments following. Bird Song of the Day A bit of a duet. #COVID19 At reader request, I’ve added this daily chart from 91-DIVOC. The data is the Johns Hopkins CSSE data. Here is the site. I feel I’m engaging in a...

Join us at The Daily Shot

Please join us at The Daily Shot.The Daily Shot® (TheDailyShot.com) is a niche graphical newsletter (see sample) that is not meant for broad distribution. Our objective is to work with a small group of professionals who are interested in a brief unbiased daily overview of global macro currents. We do not offer investment advice or trading recommendations, and nothing in The Daily Shot® should be interpreted as such.The Daily Shot® began as an...

Peak oil is coming, it’s just a question of when: Fuel for Thought

October marks a historic but largely forgotten moment in the history of the oil sector, and something which is unlikely to ever be repeated if forecasts for the demise of the world’s most valuable fossil fuel prove accurate. Fifty years ago, BP – then known as British Petroleum and state-owned – discovered oil off the coast of Scotland in the once mighty Forties field with the help of a GBP370 million loan. The financing would be equivalent to...

The Unpredictable 2020

Source: How Much I am otherwise occupied this morning on a few pressing matters, but I had to share this chart from How Much annotating the markets fall and recovery in 2020. It is a reminder how much randomness and unpredictability is encountered by investors. It is very easy to get distracted. The Armageddonists who made their forecasts in March April and May learned this the hard way. This is why it is so important to always stay focused...

What Do Rising Interest Rates Imply For Stocks, REITs And Gold?

The world is still battling a pandemic, the US government is in turmoil and there’s no shortage of other events lurking on the global stage that could cause trouble for asset markets. Should we add in rising interest rates to the list of worries? “Markets are now definitely pricing in rate hikes by the second half of 2023, but the time frame is a long way away and it will keep shifting, especially if the US continues to lose jobs as they...

Here’s What is Happening in the Economy Right Now

[embedded content]Jordan Roy-Byrne: Welcome back to The Atlas Investor podcast with Tiho Brkan. Thank you so much for tuning in today for episode number 22, Tiho, and in this episode, I know you want to cover the global economic situation and what’s going on. Please tell us why you think it’s important to cover that right now.Tiho Brkan: Hello, everybody. Hello, Jordan. I hope you’re doing well. Thank you for having me on for another podcast....

In “Staggering” Lack Of Self-Awareness, Twitter Lectures Uganda On Principles Of ‘Open Internet’

In "Staggering" Lack Of Self-Awareness, Twitter Lectures Uganda On Principles Of 'Open Internet' Twitter decided that now would be a good time to weigh in on how things are going in Uganda of all places, where Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has taken the drastic action of temporarily banning Facebook and Twitter in the final hours leading ...