18 Aug 21

Stolen from Avid Commentator.

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17 Aug 2021

Afghanistan

As some wag pointed out, Twitter is full of Covid experts who double up as US foreign policy experts. I would never claim to be an expert, but I’ve never heard anyone sensible and disinterested arguing that the Afghan army ever had a chance against …

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Weekend 14/15 August

Goldmans say that Aluminium is going skywards. EVs need a lot of the stuff, 250 kg per car. It takes a lot of energy to make, and that’s going up too. How to play this: futures or maybe Rusal, if you aren’t afraid of …

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Wrap

The Delta Variant seems to be really getting to the US Americans. Worries over it resulted (maybe) in a pullback in oil and a retreat for the dollar. The stimulus is yesterday’s news. Stock markets globally hit more all time highs. I assume this is all tied up …

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12 Aug

CPI read

US inflation (CPI measure) was 5.4% annualized in July, a rate unchanged from the previous month and fractionally above expectations.

Crude stocks were marginally less down than expected.

The Senate passed a $1T (i.e. $1MMM) infrastructure bill, with cross party support. A federal budget …

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11 Aug

Inflation

It seems fairly obvious that if the currency is rebased, inflation will occur. If the govt. announces that each pound in your bank account will be multiplied by ten overnight, the price of everything will rocket. Well, not everything. Your mortgage will suddenly have got a lot …

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10th Aug

Markets

I haven’t posted daily recently. I’m too busy with RL. But the trend seems embedded: commodities down, dollar up, yields down, curves flattening, inflation transitory, rates heading to zero (real rates -2%). Equity markets lack direction. The accepted cause seems to be the dreaded Delta …

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9th Aug

Tacit knowledge

When I was quite young, I must have seen some sort of TV interview of Hermann Bondi, then the master of a Cambridge college. He said something which resonated with me, which is that in some sense we have an instinctive grasp of Newtonian mechanics. A …

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6 Aug

Are you late to the tech party?

The time to be bullish tech was two months ago (outlined here), but back then people were busy puking tech.

Not overly surprising, but the latest big tech melt up has forced people into buying quality tech up here. Chasing tech …

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5 August

Evergrande may just be the first roach in the kitchen

the regulatory directive says that banks should stop lending to heavily indebted local-government financing vehicles (LGFVs), companies set up by city or provincial governments to finance building projects and public works. The groups, which have not so far …

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