Notes for 1 July 2021

Fertilizer

CF Industries seeks countervailing duty investigations into UAN imports from Russia and Trinidad and Tobago

I am bullish about food commodities. It’s hard to invest in farmland, but fertilizers are a reasonable proxy. As usual, I am looking for a catalyst to get …

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Notes for 30 June

This market really is crazy

Google has become bureaucratic and slow moving

The NY Times has a story which says that Google’s CEO is risk averse. Every other disruptive company has opted to defend its existing markets rather than keep challenging incumbents. That’s what …

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Wrap for 29 June 2021

Oh what a dull day. No particular news. Probably biggest move was DX up 20bp. No big deal, but it seems to have dragged energy commodities down. NZD was down 0.7%, so quite a big move, but it’s not a deep market. Equities …

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Wrap

Today was a deflationary day. Partly this was a jump in the value of $FB which won some anti-trust action. Bonds are strong, FX is pretty flat, and commodities were on average flat. Crude was down a lot, gas was up a lot, as was food. Bitcoin was up …

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Wrap

Generally, this was another reflation trade day. Bonds drifted down a bit, DXY held steady, the equity markets were up a bit and commodities overall (GSCI) were flat. Oil managed to eke out a 1% rise.

ACWI was up 40bp.

Core PCE was up 3.4% YoY. This is …

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Wrap

(I was out yesterday, this is written way after the close of markets, but I add it for completeness.)

• commodities largely flat. Precious metals steady/rising,
• bonds flat,
• DX sagging a bit, 91.7,
• equities generally grinding higher, but nothing dramatic.

Nexhealth, Plaid (nothing to do with Tesla)

Packy …

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Wrap

(This is written at about 5:30 pm GMT, so US markets are still open.) This seems like another boring day. Currencies, bonds, equity indexes seem pretty flat. Even $BTC moved only around 3%, which is about as stable as you’re going to get it.

Something is happening …

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Wrap

Jay Powell started some Congressional testimony. It seems that he wasn’t asked any difficult questions, and didn’t say anything too new, so the market rallied hard. Powell is due to go in Feb., and the last thing he wants to do is start a stockmarket crash before …

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Wrap

At the end of last week, markets were spooked by the Fed saying that they might need to raise rates a tad by the end of 2023. Given we had an inflation print of 5% a few weeks ago, this seems like stating the obvious. James Bullard, president of …

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Inflation is on the rise. What can I use to hedge?

There is quite a choice:

• $PFIX (more about interest rate risk),
• $IVOL (more about being long credit but with crash protection),
• $INFL (mix of commodities, real assets & equities with pricing power).

Talking about inflation, inflation hedges like $BTU, $EQR …

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