Markets

The data are in for house prices in the United Kingdom and they are not good. Prices have now fallen 18% from their peak in October 2007 according to the latest Nationwide Building Society survey. They were down a massive 2.5% in December…

The video below is an addendum to my post on Andrew Barry's Barron's cover story piece regarding Treasury Bonds and the growing consensus to avoid them. While I agree with the consensus about Treasury bonds being a bubble, I expect the…

The consensus is coming down on the bearish side for U.S. government bonds in 2009. There is ample reason to believe that Treasuries will be an asset class to avoid this year. Yet, as I argue in a post a few days ago, "rates can go to…

If you are wondering why the U.S. housing market is a mess, watch this video about a $103,000 mortgage that was used to finance a shack --literally, a shack. Of course, the mortgage was packaged with a bunch of others into a mortgage…

With the global economy n recession and inflation headed toward zero, government bonds are looking like the best place to put ones money. As a result, we have seen yields on these assets drop to incredibly low levels in the world's largest…

The S&P/Case-Shiller Index for U.S. housing came out today. It was a pretty nasty little report. It showed a clear acceleration in home price declines for the month of October, the latest month for which data is available. In the…

Despite the gloom and doom that you might read right here, things are certainly much better in credit markets than at the height of the credit crisis. Of course we still have a long way to go, but this chart from Bloomberg of the TED…

I have been arguing for some time that the credit bubble has been replaced by a government bond bubble because much of the liquidity pumped out by the world's central banks is not going to increased lending. As this money must be invested…

Recently, an enormous 33% premium has developed for Brent. To me, this gap is utterly inexplicable except by technical factors. Translation: some players have a huge long position of WTI and they are getting squeezed.

Is this an unorderly decline for the dollar? These last two days have been bad for the dollar. We are seeing heavy losses against the Swiss Franc, the Euro, the Australian Dollar, and The Japanese Yen.