Tag Archives: Fixed Income

Overstretch

by CantillonCH

Markets have paradoxically both been on edge – and in the throes of euphoria – since the repo shock in mid-September, being at the same time alarmed and yet strangely reassured by the Fed’s frantic backpedalling and the $400+ billion boost to its balance sheet which this entailed.

However, at a time when an already faltering flow of business revenues across the major nations has now to weather the unquantifiable, but potentially far-reaching, disturbance spread by the China coronavirus outbreak, the margin for error seems slim, indeed. Extreme levels of overstretch are everywhere apparent.

To download as a PDF, please click here: 20-02-21 Overstretch

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Risk Par(i)ty

by CantillonCH

One of the truisms of the current market is that volatility – both historical and implied –  is historically low, but just how extreme is it? How does this manifest itself in the bond, as opposed to the stock, market? What does it tell us about the risks we may be running by maintaining naked exposures?

Please follow the link to find a brief, but instructive overview of this most burning of  issues:-

17-10-18 Vol

Once through with feeling

by CantillonCH

Some readers may be interested in putting a voice – and even a face – to the author. Below are links to three recent audio-visual publications in which I discuss US & Chinese macro as well as the interrelations between the three great asset classes of stocks, bonds, an commodities. Following on is a wider sampling of my views. Continue reading …

Historical Norms? Really, Janet?

by CantillonCH

In the Q&A which followed the latest Federal Reserve exercise in ostrich imitation, Janet Yellen offered up this giant hostage to fortune, if only in the spirit of she-would-say-that-wouldn’t-she:

‘Overall, I would say that the threats to financial stability I would characterize, at this point, as moderate. In general, I would not say that asset valuations are out of line with historical norms.’

Patently, if she has somehow arrived at the determination that there is no indeterminably constituted asset bubble in operation, then it figures that non-bubble asset prices cannot be out of line with their norms. Chalk one up to answering one’s own question in the affirmative.

But how much truth is there in this claim? Not very much at all as you will discover if you click on the following link to read this extract of the latest monthly ‘Money, Macro & Markets‘:

MMM Sept 2016 Pt III

 

A Trap of their Own Making

by CantillonCH

As we have laid out in some detail in our professional work, it is clear that Chinese banks have entirely lost their inhibitions about creating money these past twelve months. It is equally clear that once such money is called into existence, someone must be caught in the act of holding it when a balance sheet snapshot is taken, however eager their desire to ‘pass the bad or depreciating half-crown to the other fellow’ may be and thus regardless of what the fate of that money will be an instant after the shutter has closed on the statistical camera. Continue reading …

Money, Macro & Markets – The Archive

by CantillonCH

Regular readers will know that the articles published here are but a small subset of the detailed work I undertake to analyse economic and political developments and their effects on markets. In order to give some idea of the scope of this, presented below is an archive of past issues of the Austrian School-informed, in-depth monthly publication, ‘Money, Macro & Markets’ in addition to which I compile twice monthly updates as the ‘Midweek Macro Musings’ which are also made available on a complimentary basis to subscribers to the former letter.

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The Road to Canossa

by CantillonCH

That the artificial interest rates in evidence in our hugely distorted capital and money markets can be made negative in nominal as well as in real terms is, alas, the curse of the modern age. Though entirely at odds with natural order – as we have repeatedly tried to make plain – they are also a curse that we are unlikely to have lifted any time soon, especially not in a Europe where there is no effective restraint to be had upon the exercise of his awful powers by the likes of a fanatic like Draghi.

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