Archive - Apr 12, 2015

The mood between Greece's leftist government and its euro zone partners, especially Germany, has deteriorated in the last few weeks, with personal recriminations flying between ministers and calls from Athens for Berlin to pay war reparations. The paper said at last week's meeting the Greek representative just asked where the money was "like a taxi driver", according to sources, and insisted his country would soon be bankrupt. The euro zone sources told the paper that Greece's creditors do not believe this is the case and that it would be a domestic political issue if Athens is unable to fully pay salaries and pensions.

A prime minister admitting that his government has been arrogant and has screwed things up? Am I reading this correctly?

Mohamed El-Erian's comments this week caused a stir among the status quo-huggers, as they were clearly a valuation call on the financial markets suggesting that currently having capital invested was likely to yield substantially lower or negative return in the future. This is an extremely important concept in understanding the "real value of cash." Not unlike the rhetoric of the late 1990’s or mid-2000’s, there is no shortage of rationalizations for why such currently extraordinary valuations are reasonable and justifiable. The fact remains firmly in place, stocks are expensive. Of course, since Wall Street does not make fees on investors holding cash, maybe there is another reason they are so adamant that you remain invested all the time. 

A look ahead into next week's macro forces.

How’s this for a provocative thought: what if the very earthly economic cycles somehow responded to the solar cycle? Unusual as this may sound, actually there is evidence of a relationship between the two.

There is much more going on than just a problem in the Japanese bond market...