A Quick Dive Below The Surface (video)

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Like We Said

From our weekly message posted Monday:

The thing about the U.S.'s protectionist ambitions is that they're being imposed on virtually all of our major trading partners at the very same time. In essence, we are doing "battle" with a number of armies, none of whom are battling among themselves. In fact, our recent actions are sowing a newfound kinship among our now trade adversaries and a great deal of global deal making (that excludes us) in the process.

Putting Current Market Action In Perspective (video)

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This Week's Message: Good Time For A War? Well, That's What Pyrrhus Once Thought....

Three of the world's major central banks held their policy meetings last week and issued statements in line with what we anticipated and  expressed herein. Asset prices responded as we suggested they would as well; that is until the threat of a global trade war was thrust back onto the scene in a big way.

Podcast: This Morning's Market Angst

Consumers Are Feeling Really Good About the Here and Now, A Little Less So Going Forward, And They're Smelling Some Inflation Coming

One of the most watched consumer sentiment surveys is the one performed monthly by the University of Michigan (it's an input to our macro index). The preliminary June survey, released this morning, was interesting.

This Morning's Log Entry: A Followup To Yesterday's Blog Post

6/14/18 (Thursday)

The Fed and the ECB meetings played out precisely as we scripted  yesterday: The Fed was more hawkish with 4 hikes this year now being the consensus, and the ECB softened up by pushing QE through year-end, and announcing that – as economic things currently stand -- interest rates won’t be touched until we’re well into 2019.