Andrew Lees

One common metric used by analysts to gauge how the economy is doing comes from freight or rail tonnage. If the economy is doing well, then more goods will be shipped via trucks and trains. This is exactly what is happening. Andy Lees…

We have seen a host of manufacturing sector data over the past few days. Most of it has been pretty good and the data demonstrate that the global recovery has continued. Nevertheless, reviewing the data from the US, Europe, China and…

Asian stocks fell as China released a bearish manufacturing report this morning. Added to this bearish news out of China is a spate of negative credit ratings news in Europe (Spanish Bank CAM, Brussels regional government, etc) and a…

Two notes from Andy Lees of UBS confirmed for me that a slowdown in China is underway and that developments in Europe are adding to the pressure.  In my view, this may mean a second-half reversal of the tightening we have seen in China…

As the Chinese government looks to slow the economy, non-performing loans in the banking sector will come into view. Clearly, the Chinese authorities want to slow the pace of house price and consumer price inflation and reduce rampant…

On China via Andy Lees of UBS: The yields on two sets of bills moved in opposite directions. The PBOC issued 3 month bills at a yield 4bpts higher than the prevailing rate, whilst 3 year bill yields fell 2bpts. “The divergence underscores…

Because of short covering, we may eventually see a much larger reversal in the Euro than we have seen to date. And although I recently noted that the Euro was still overvalued on a purchasing power parity basis, nothing goes down in a…

The big news is the economy and President-elect Obama's reaction to it. The pundtitocracy has really been hammering him on his staff picks and the meat of his stimulus package. To be sure, there have been a few positive notes about Obama's…