Markets

We've had a great deal of movement in the NAR US Housing Affordability Index recently. The index is meant to measure homebuyers' ability to finance house purchases and given some recent events, it's worth taking a look at what the index is…

Both Bill Gross of PIMCO and Jan Hatzius of Goldman Sachs do not believe the weak jobs report will be enough to cause the Fed to call off its tapering of large scale asset purchases.

Something highly unusual is happening in the mortgage market however. Recently jumbo mortgage rates have been lower than conforming rates. This is one of those market dislocations that most would have never thought possible. Yet here we…

Regardless of the metric that you use, deviations from the long term growth trend are unstainable and will eventually mean revert.

Emerging economies are reeling as rising US bond yields are squeezing the most vulnerable and funding intensive parts of the market. But the squeeze in EM yields is merely an hors d'oeuvre to what is likely waiting in the wings.

Bank Indonesia has fallen far behind the curve in its currency management tactics. After fairly steady intervention kept USD/IDR trading near the 10,000 area from May through early August, the authorities have been allowing the pair to move…

The X-axis is the change in the spot currencies against the dollar since late May. The Y-axis is the change in the local 5-year debt. It is a useful way to conceptualize what has happened from a total return perspective. Korea, Czech,…

The dollar is broadly higher against the major currencies, with the Swedish krona and euro suffering the most. Poor retail sales in Sweden and unexpected weakness in the German labor market report (unemployment rose 7k vs the consensus…

The capital outflow from the emerging markets is proving as destabilizing as the previous inflows. Pundits can talk about currency wars all they want, but the real issue is the ability to cope with volatile capital flows, which is the…

Yesterday, we learned that the Case-Shiller Housing Index is up 12.1% through June. In response, Robert Shiller said "housing is a market with momentum" and he believes that the momentum is up. Let's remember that the Case-Shiller Index is…