speculation

The title of the post is supposed to marry what's happening on the pandemic front with what's happening in financial markets. The gist is that, in a world where unexpected levels of economic resiliency has been the norm, we should wonder…

The Swiss National Bank’s announcement that it had decided to scrap its floor for the Swiss Franc against the euro is the biggest thing to hit the foreign exchange market since the UK and Sweden were booted out of ERM. This is a very big…

If you look at the last two posts on this site from Marc Chandler and from Sober Look the connection between Fed tapering and money flows is clear. Hot money is flowing out of emerging markets and into Europe.

Yves Smith argues that the US equity markets have come to play an outsized role in the US from a policy and practical level. And she warns that it is never a good idea to try to assess complex phenomena with a single metric.

This is a good interview with Hugh Hendry, who I always enjoy. It runs twenty minutes. Hugh Hendry, of Eclectica Asset Management, takes the long view on investing at The Economist's Buttonwood Gathering on October 25th 2012. He was…

I saw this story yesterday in a Swedish newspaper and thought it was interesting enough to comment on. Apparently, Swedish investment professionals are telling clients that the Spanish market is "hot" right now, given the depressed state of…

By Sober Look Economists continue to insist that there is no connection between Fed's monetary expansion and increases in commodity prices, particularly agricultural products globally (discussed here). Here is a typical comment:  If it is…

I highly recommend the FT article on China's 1% in the links below. They bring up the capital flight problem that a Chinese hard landing might mean. I noted last April that Victor Shih gave a talk at INET on the Fragile State of China’s FX…

The big headline today is still JPMorgan Chase and it's huge trading losses. Clearly this is a black eye for JPM but the question goes to what longer term consequences the incident will have.

I ran across three separate articles on peak oil at well-regarded financial news sites today: The Economist, The Financial Times and Le Figaro. I thought I'd give you a run down of what they were saying and what it means for the economy and…