interest rates

After I released my daily commentary a few weeks ago about S&P500 earnings, wages and multiple expansion, there has been a lot of talk about multiple expansion in the media. I think this talk is warranted because this is the crux of the…

The seemingly never-ending debate on passive vs. active investment management is beginning to annoy me. The discussion is one-dimensional and, at times, completely derailed. I shall be the first to admit that the long-only industry has not…

Long-term interest rates are a series of future short-term rates. That necessarily means that an interest-rate targetting central bank exerts the dominant influence not just on the short end in its currency area, but across the yield curve.…

Today I thought I would try a little experiment by beginning to write a daily commentary. I have been thinking about doing this for a while and decided I needed to give it a go here because I don't have an in-depth article I am working on.…

I was on BNN this afternoon talking to presenter Howard Green and The Economist's Ryan Avent about Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's testimony before congress today. You can read Bernanke's prepared remarks here and watch the video clip here.…

Sweden has been one of the countries to have best weathered the economic crisis. Despite a hiccup in its domestic economy and the extra deflationary impulse from souring loans to the Baltics in 2009, the Swedish economy has been remarkably…

“Who is afraid of currency wars?” asks Gavyn Davies in the FT. I have known Gavyn for 25 years and have to confess that he is way out of my league intellectually. He is one of the smartest people I have ever met and, thankfully, also one of…

The talk in 2013 has been of the great rotation from bonds to the U.S. stock market. This accompanies a new world record for the Russell 2000 Index (small-cap stocks). The S&P 500 has topped 1,500. It did so twice before, in 2000 and…

I have come across a number of Spanish-language links that I believe collectively add good colour to our understanding about the current economic and political situation in Spain. I am going to use them as a jumping off point for this quick…

QE is an asset swap. No new net financial assets are introduced into the private sector in contrast to when the government deficit spends and does add new net financial assets. So for it to have all of those seriously beneficial effects…