Archive - Aug 29, 2015

Political turmoil isn’t Malaysia’s only problem. Two weeks ago, in the wake of the yuan devaluation, a $10 billion bond maturity sparked the largest one-day plunge for the ringgit in two decades, serving notice that whispers about a replay of the currency crisis that gripped the country in 1997/98 were about to become shouts. Because it appears the situation is set to deteriorate meaningfully in the near term, and because the country’s political situation could serve to undermine already fragile confidence, we thought it an opportune time to revisit exactly what happened two decades ago.

Small Cap stocks are in the middle of their worst summer doldrums since 2011 - and in fact for many individual stocks, worst summer since the collapse in 2008/9. While talking heads proclaim these smaller (supposedly more domestically-oriented) stocks a must-own, they have underperformed significantly as the credit cycle turns (thanks to their higher sensitivity to funding costs, among other things). Judging by this week's farce, the supposedly high-beta small caps are being BTFD'd aggressively either and perhaps that is because, since 1926, on average, September and October are the only months in which small-capitalization stocks have posted losses.

Simply put, a perfect storm of failing trends...

Some context for those who insist renewables will 'solve' everything...

Life is short...especially for a crony buffoon

So why did debt levels rise so dramatically after the final central bank restraint was removed? It is essentially due to the massive subsidy central bankers provided. If you tax a thing you get less of it (think all the tax on labour) but if you subsidise it you will get more of it. As time went by, debt obviously grew ever larger and eventually large enough to become an integral part of the business cycle. In other words, central banks could not stop the subsidy for fear of creating, well, a 2008 financial meltdown.

Last night we heard the best 'excuse' yet if you are caught with an Ashley Madison account, from Dan Loeb - "due diligence." Today, not to be outdone by a married hedge fund manager, Vice-President Joe Biden's son "Hunter" has unleashed his own set of excuses for member ship of the extramarital affairs website, as Breitbart reports  - Biden thinks international agents, possibly Russian, who objected to his board membership with a Ukrainian gas company set up a fake account to discredit him. However, IP mapping suggests otherwise...

Dollar recovered from the exaggerated panic at the start of last week.  Outlook is still constructive.  Here is an overview of the technical condition of currencies, bonds, oil , and S&P 500.  

The more we think about it, the less the classical division between microeconomics (which studies the behavior of individuals and production entities) and macroeconomics (which deals with the performance of the economy as a whole and not its individual markets and components) makes any sense - certainly not in the 21st century. And in our view it is this disconnect between the two that is at the heart of the failure of Keynesian economics – which at best is incomplete and at worst is all just baloney.