I’m always being approached by fund managers pitching their latest or greatest fund and many of them appear quite good with impressive people, performance, and/or process. Every now and then I see a fund that to me makes little sense and the latest to annoy me is the generic Asian Fund of Hedge Fund…I haven’t …
Monthly Archive: November 2010
pub-5731955080761916
Nov 24
Spain is the latest focus
Source: Bloomberg The above chart shows 10 year Spanish bond yields hitting record highs overnight…this intense acceleration of yields (or sell-off) is a pretty strong sign this Euro-Sovereign crisis is a long long way from over. Expect more volatility in sharemarkets yet as Spain carries more risk to Europe and the Global Economy than Ireland …
pub-5731955080761916
Nov 17
Australian Government Bond Yield Curve – Nov 2010
Not surprisingly since August 31 interest rates have increased across the board on the back of stronger local economic data (good unemployment, strong China etc) and now the yield curve has rates above those back at the end of May 2010. It will be interesting to see what happend to interest rates over the coming days/weeks given …
pub-5731955080761916
Nov 16
Government Initiated Inflation
For the first time in a while I decided to have a detailed look at what has been driving the inflaiton results in Australia…and whilst our 2.8% inflation figure is near the top end of the RBA’s range, it is only at the top end because of government…not consumer demand as we are often led to …
Nov 11
Increasingly looking bad for PIGS
Source: Bloomberg…from left to right…Ireland, Portugal, Greece, and Spain on the second row I found the above charts from Calculated Risk and these sharply increasing yields for each of their bonds is suggesting that the Euro-Sovereign crisis is far from over. I can only imagine there will be significant pressure on the solvency of each …
Nov 05
What is Quantitative Easing?
I love Felix Salmon’s description which I’ve shortened and paraphrased just a little bit… The people selling Treasury bonds to the Fed are big banks, who are told in advance exactly how many Treasury bonds the Fed wants to buy. As a result, they’re likely to buy Treasuries ahead of the auction, with the intent …
Nov 04
Long term bet of the month???
The US Dollar is at record lows thanks to the Fed’s announcement to print some money, the Renminbi (Yuan) is pegged to the US Dollar and the US Government is putting lots of pressure on the Chinese to appreciate it…surely the long term bet of the month is to buy the Yuan as there appears to …
Nov 02
Ireland…not looking too good
Source: Bloomberg The really bad news globally is the Irish story…their housing price crash has led to a banking crisis and an economy that is pretty much stuffed. Whilst Irish sovereign debt spike in May along with all risky European debt the above chart shows how much worse the market is viewing Irish debt today. …
Nov 02
The RBA goes up and so does the Yield Curve
Normally I try and produce the chart before the RBA’s decision but was a little slow this time but it is a little intersting to see the market’s reaction to the RBA’s decision to increase the cash rate to 4.75% and its shown in the chart above…an increase in yields across the all maturities although …