private portfolio preferences

This is going to be a short thought piece. But the takeaway should be that the convergence to zero will continue unabated as the threat of inflation is muted given the combination of excess capacity, high private debt and unfavourable…

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…

The big news today was the ECB’s decision to lower interest rates 10 basis points to 0.05% and its simultaneous decision to engage in a form of quantitative easing using the asset-backed market as a vehicle. While these measures are…

Comments by top Federal Reserve officials support the idea that the Fed is going to move away from quantitative easing as a policy tool and lean more heavily on forward guidance. There are a number of reasons for this, not the least of…

I spoke at a Euromoney conference on inflation-linked products last year. My thesis at the time that deflation is the real problem and that inflation isn't going to be a concern - which has largely proved right - was out of step with most…

Quick note here on the US and the UK to change things up a bit from the Cyprus obsession.

According to an analysis by Reuters, small and medium-sized banks in the US have started to take on risk as the squeeze in net interest margins is beginning to hurt profitability. The goal is to boost returns despite the low-interest rate…

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 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…

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…