interest rates

The rout in the energy sector is complete now. Cuts in capital expenditure are everywhere you look, not just in shale oil. With oil stocks at a record high level, it is unlikely that a rebound in prices will happen in the near term. And…

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand is now signalling rate cuts are possible, coming out of its last policy meeting. Its 10-yr bonds have the highest yield of all developed economy major Central Banks. Meanwhile the US Federal Reserve’s last…

Compared to the 1930s, this deflationary crisis has played out much slower and more benignly. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a crisis. It is one, as evidenced by the beggar-thy-neighbour tactics like negative rates and quantitative easing that…

I had been intending to write this post as a counterpoint to what I wrote yesterday about curve inversion. The Chief bullet point was going to be about the Fed’s not wanting to create curve inversion. But with the Swiss National Bank move,…

This is going to be a brief post on another of my potential ten surprises for 2015. The thesis here is that, with two year rates at 0.52%, all we need to invert the yield curve is a 50 basis point hike. While there is considerable…

As low nominal GDP growth takes hold, we should expect short-term interest rates to remain low and for the yield curve to flatten. There are three main reasons this is so. First, low nominal growth rates imply low inflation. Second, to the…

Yesterday, I planned to write this piece as a compilation of narratives for individual countries in the global economy: India, the US, the UK, Spain, etc. However, some of these narratives are more useful than others. So I am going to lead…

The Russian rouble was last trading at a rate a tad better than 55 roubles to the US dollar and WTI was over $56 a barrel the last I checked. This could be the end of a mini-crisis or a lull in events. I tend to believe it is a lull and…

This is my third post on tail risk now. I think the continued and broadening market volatility we have seen across asset classes in the last few months is a sign of increased tail risk and i wanted to put some parameters around how to think…

With Black Friday behind us, it’s a pretty good time to do a check of market currents and what they mean. And despite my generally optimistic view of the US near-term economic landscape, a lot of what I am seeing now points to continued…