Category Archives: USA

Faites vos jeux!

by CantillonCH

Here we are, the day of the US election: a vote which follows an unusually rancorous campaign in a nation more than normally divided by culture, ideology, and notions of ‘identity’ – real or affected.

To the extent we believe what their advisors have told them to say on the stump or promote in their slick, slanted advertising slots, Trump is the man who wishes to preserve as much of the status quo as possible – for good or ill – while Biden stands as the front half of a curious pantomime horse: a half-century veteran, machine politician who seems to aspire to eke out his dotage as head of the student union of some awfully Right-On, Liberal Arts college. Continue reading …

Hoping for Growth. Searching for Value.

by CantillonCH

Thanks very much to my old friend, Steve Sedgwick at Squawk Box Europe for the chat this morning. We looked at Growth v Value, the US v ROW, we touched on bonds and borrowing, money supply, inflation, lockdown, commodities & gold – all in under 10 minutes!

 

To fill out what all might seem a bit rushed on the soundfile, here are the notes I sent to accompany our chat, complete with a little extra gloss for you to read at your leisure:-

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Free Lunch Finance

by CantillonCH

The poster girl of the voguish crankdom that is Modern Monetary Theory (“MMT”) – Stephanie Kelton, has been out pimping her new book – “The Deficit Myth” – with a great deal of help from the unofficial PR department which she seems to have, nestled within the House Organ of Davos, the execrable FT.

Here, Professor Kelton – for all the puffery about how fearless and radical is her approach – is pushing at an open door: a gaping aperture in the last bastion of economic rationality that is being held open by no less than Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, a man who recently went on record to boast: “We will never run out of money.”

[Also available as a podcast]

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Don’t Bank On It

by CantillonCH

On April 13th, a financial pundit with a wide media following made the following (loosely transcribed) proposition about US banking stocks: Banks won’t rally because rates -long and short- are too low; Japan is our marker – banks there falling while their US/EZ peers rose pre-GFC and have not made any ground since; vis-à-vis their EZ peers, US bank returns have long been anomalous, ergo their out-performance won’t be repeated.  We demur in the main.

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Turnaround Tuesday

by CantillonCH

After the excitement of the past few sessions, it was not entirely unexpected that what we old market stagers used to call, ‘Turnaround Tuesday’, would deliver its traditional mix of reflection, position rebalancing, and general counter-trend moves of either the stop-profit or the ‘Why do I always buy the top?’, buyers’ regret kind. [First Published June 4th] Continue reading …

Dog Chases Tail

by CantillonCH

The sharpening of the conflict between China and the US became all too apparent last week when Beijing released an official white paper in which it seemingly abandoned all hint of conciliation with a burst of accusations, exculpations, and a good deal of bluster. [First Published June 3rd] Continue reading …

A Long March to the Bottom

by CantillonCH

Last week, as the Trade War with the US worsened – and as the assault on China’s flagship telecoms company, Huawei, was intensified – President Xi Jinping, accompanied by his chief trade negotiator, Liu He, made a highly symbolic visit to Jiangxi, the starting point of the Communist Party’s fabled  ‘Long March’ in 1934. [First published May 27th] Continue reading …

The Ph(o)enix Rises

by CantillonCH

Please find links to some of the commentaries made as part your author’s role as investment strategy adviser to Phenix Consulting & Asset Management over the course of 2018. ‘Market Movers’ provide updates on developments in and projections for commodity markets themselves while ‘Primary Concerns’ presents the L/S fund’s monthly results:- Continue reading …

Trade Wars: Those damn’d torpedoes are OURS!

by CantillonCH

For many an age, a principal element of Britain’s strategy in its frequent wars with its Continental rivals was that of the naval blockade.

Throughout the long years of increasing mastery of the High Seas, the nation’s fleet admirals, frigate captains and often forcibly-impressed jack tars were frequently to be found, hovering just beyond the enemy’s horizon in order to deny their French, Dutch, or Spanish adversaries any freedom of navigation, whether for commercial or military purposes. Thus they aimed to limit their foes’ operational reach and slowly to bleed their economies dry.

Indeed, the one great defeat suffered by the British in a quarter of a millennium of oceanic predominance was partly the result of the fleet’s rare inability to secure its grip on the coastline of the Crown’s rebellious subjects in the American colonies – a failure partly due to sheer logistical difficulties and partly to the confusion of purpose which the simultaneous defence of the then more highly-prized Caribbean sugar islands entailed. Continue reading …

Trade Wars: Blue-on-Blue

by CantillonCH

The so-called ‘war’ over trade being conducted by the US & China has given rise to much ill-informed commentary about its supposed benefits, its prospective victims, and China’s putative responses. Continue reading …