The sausage machine

Stephen Semler writes a substack exposing venality and hypocrisy in US Federal policitics. You can read his latest here I always regret reading this stuff. It sickens me to write about it and it’s not even my country, so I absolutely have no ability to change …

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Oil price spikes

From oilprice.com:

Tuesday, August 23, 2022

When many started doubting the necessity and viability of OPEC+, the oft-mooted Iranian nuclear deal seems to have given the oil group a new meaning and a new direction. Almost in unison, participant countries and respective top officials have started …

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August 22nd

Wrap

The market is skittish today. The reason that Briefing.com made up is that people are worried that J Powell will go out of his way to shoot down the “Peak Fed” narrative. Seriously? The market is down because of something the chairman of the Fed just …

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Everyone is at the beach

Wrap

The markets seemed to sleep today. Generally, the tone was bullish/risk-on: bonds sagged almost across the board, presumably indicating that there is a consensus that inflation is coming down. The odd exception was crypto, which sagged quite badly. I heard a theory on …

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UK back to the 1970s

Well, we’re now firmly in double-digit territory in the UK, in terms of YoY CPI increases. This is not only the biggest market story, it’s dominating the Main Street news. The UK does not have the protection that comes from issuing the world …

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ESG and anti-ESG

I understand why people like the idea of ESG. I understand that cynical, hard-nosed hustlers want to muscle in to profit on what the mass of suckers want. I guess this explains Blackrock’s obsession with ESG, but I am not totally sure. I suspect that …

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15 Aug 2022

The US Treasury curve inversion

There are a lot of measures of yields and discount curves. Looking at raw T-bill yields is not ideal, because they have cash flows at all sorts of dates. However, there is clearly a material difference between the duration of the 10Y …

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Friday 12, August 2022

Farmland

The Chicago Fed survey indicates a huge increase in land values for “good” farmland.

Farmland values for the Seventh Federal Reserve District rose 22 percent in the second quarter of 2022 from a year earlier, roughly matching the year-over-year gains of the previous two quarters …

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Leaky buckets

Arthur Okun likened taxes to leaky buckets. The leaks are the unintended consequences and lost revenue caused by the change of peoples behaviour in response to the imposing of the tax.

Roger Lowenstein wrote a piece about the latest omnibus bill passed by the US Senate replaced a …

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Wednesday 10, August 2022

Coinbase

[[$COIN]] results out.

$COIN is guiding $1.5 billion of stock based comp for FY22 while firing 1000 employees. That’s $1.5 million per fired employee.

This is not a joke tweet. Absolutely egregious.

— Woodrow Oates Montague (@sadvalueinvestr) August 9, 2022

Inflation

Inflation expectations …

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