Photo Credit: Jason Woodhead || Forget the United States Oil Fund — if you want to own oil, buy a tank and store the oil on your own property. This should be a short post. Buffett likes to own T-bills when he doesn’t have anything that he wants to buy. Why? He is storing value until the time comes when he can buy something that he thinks offers a superb return over the long haul. And now for something that seems completely different: commodity investing, when it was introduced in the nineties, offered “yield” from rolling the futures contracts from month-to-month. That ended when the trade got too crowded, and the “yield” went negative. The ETFs that pursued these strategies were … [Read More...]

The Worst Policies are Made During Crises
Photo Credit: Mike Licht || As a culture, we are very much “live for the moment.” But what happens when buyers of Treasuries decide that it’s not worth it anymore?I am not a fan of the Democrats or of Big Government Republicans like Bush Jr. and Trump. In general, I think we need to shrink our government, decentralize, and de-lever our economy such that we make debt a smaller component of how we finance our lives. The Democrats talk about inequality, but they don’t really mean it. Increasing marginal tax rates is good show, but the real game is how income is calculated, and they won’t touch that, because their richest donors find ways to hide their income — the … [Read More...]
Too Much Debt
Photo Credit: Steve Rotman || As Simon and Garfunkel sang, “The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls…”Debt-based economies are unstable. Economies with a lot of short-term debt are more unstable. The Fed is like Johnny One-Note, or Fat Freddie with a hammer. They only know one tool, and it will solve all problems.Are there problems from too much debt? More debt will solve the problem. Shift debts from the private to the public sector. Don’t let the private market solve this on its own.Though the bed debt is not in the same place as the last crisis, we are once again trying to play favorites through the Federal Reserve and rescue entities that took … [Read More...]
Squawk: EURUSD – Euro positive short-term The Euro has managed a…
EURUSD – Euro positive short-term The Euro has managed a decent rebound effort from early April having been setting up last week to try to make a more bearish signal into the European Central Bank… [Read More...]
Are Bonds Still Relevant?
Do bonds have a place anymore in your portfolio in the new Federal Reserve paradigm? The Fed has a long history of creating asset bubbles, then later – sometimes years later – letting the air out of the balloon through monetary policy or regulatory change, leaving investors licking their wounds. The most recent and most […] The post Are Bonds Still Relevant? appeared first on INO.com Trader's Blog. [Read More...]
Focus on the Long-term
Photo Credit: Sacha Chua || Planning is a good thing.In any investment decisions, one must look at the long term. Don’t pay any attention to news that does not permanently change business conditions.The thing that drew my attention here is the rather weak coronavirus. Stalin supposedly said, “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” My sympathies to the families of those who have died from the coronavirus. But to society as a whole, the coronavirus has done less damage than influenza does every year.As such, I don’t pay attention to the coronavirus. Stocks are long-term assets, and if the coronavirus will have no impact on the economy past 2025, I don’t see why I … [Read More...]
Why Longer-Term Bonds Have Greater Price Volatility (Interest Rate Risk)
A reader writes in, asking: “I am aware that bonds and bond funds with longer duration have greater price changes in response to interest rate moves than shorter-term bonds do. And given that, I understand that longer-term bonds generally have higher yields because of that higher risk. That makes perfect sense. What I have never been able to wrap my head around is why do the prices of longer duration bonds fluctuate more severely?” A bond’s market price is really just the result of a net present value calculation. That is, the price of a bond at any given time is the sum of the present values of each of the cash flows from the bond (i.e., the present value of … [Read More...]
Squawk: USDCAD poised for an intermediate-term bear shift; USDJPY neutral A…
USDCAD poised for an intermediate-term bear shift; USDJPY neutral A broadly more negative tone for the US Dollar has been seen in early 2019 given a more dovish tone from FOMC Members including the… [Read More...]
Squawk: USDJPY poised into US Employment report The US Dollar has…
USDJPY poised into US Employment report The US Dollar has been the strong global currency against most major currencies since March of this year despite a corrective setback at the end of April US… [Read More...]
A quick note about the bond market
I don’t have a daily post for you today. So, in lieu of a daily, I wanted to make some more general comments about interest rates that I have been making in my market commentary pieces. The accelerated hike timetable In February, I wrote a post saying, “The march higher in US interest rates will […] This website is now reader-supported via Patreon. Full-text emails are available on that platform, including the new daily and weekly newsletter posts. Become a Patron! [Read More...]
Why the ten-year’s hitting 3.25% has spooked asset markets
This is how Fed tightening regimes work We’re bracing for another big sell off in equities today. I don’t know if you saw my piece yesterday on market groups breaking below 50- and 200-day daily moving averages. I said “I don’t have a view on whether this is important. But the technicals are weak.” For […] This website is now reader-supported via Patreon. Full-text emails are available on that platform, including the new daily and weekly newsletter posts. Become a Patron! [Read More...]
The Balance: On Private Activity Bonds
Photo Credit: Thomas Hawk=================For about two months, I wondered when I would write this. Now I know… I’m writing it now. To all my readers, I am letting you know that Aleph Blog is not ending, but it is changing. I accepted a writing assignment with The Balance. I am going to write 4-5 articles for them per month, and correct some old articles as well. I will publish links to them here. Like Aleph Blog, The Balance is free, so you don’t have to do anything more than click on the article link here to read it.Why did I do this? I felt I was getting stale in my writing. I was a little bored; that’s why I wasn’t writing so much. … [Read More...]
Squawk: The Fed the key focus today with rate hike priced…
The Fed the key focus today with rate hike priced in Today Wednesday 26th September will see the financial markets focus firmly on the Fed and the FOMC Meeting which is expected from market pricing… [Read More...]
Opinions on the Market, Redux
Here’s the second half of my most recent interview with Erin Ade at RT Boom/Bust. [First half located here.] We discussed:Stock buybacks, particularly the buyback that GM is doingValuations of the stock market and bondsEffect of the strong dollar on corporate earnings in the USEffect of lower crude oil prices on capital spendingInvesting in Europe, good or bad?Seven minutes roar by when you are on video, and though taped, there is only one shot, so you have to get it right. On the whole, I felt the questions were good, and I was able to give reasonable answers. One nice thing about Erin, she doesn’t interrupt you, and she allows for a few rabbit trails. [Read More...]