New Zealand

If the early bitcoin markets are an indication of what will happen once New Zealand opens for illiquid FX trade, it will be a risk off kinda day...

What investors will focus on in the week ahead

Initial conditions matter when contemplating impact of Greek referendum

At the open, Europe looked in the abyss, and with no help coming from China, it did not like what it saw: And then the answer came from the Swiss National Bank, which stepped in to prevent the collapse just as Europe was opening. Because seemingly out of nowhere, a tremendous bid came in to life the EURCHF, buying Euros (against the CHF and the USD) and selling Europe's last left safety currency. We now know that it was the SNB, the same central bank which is the proud owner of well over $1 billion in Apple stock.

Nobody can deny that the chances of war are increasing in the world.

Trying to make sense of the global capital markets.

A funny thing happened in the last year since China gave up on its hard-line reforms and folded back to stimulate by all means necessary... the financial economy soared and the real economy sunk. Iron Ore prices are near record lows and Rebar prices are at record lows as stocks spike.. and this should be no surprise since we were told by a rural Chinese chap recently that "making money in stocks is a lot easier than farmwork" or construction or real world activity.

"We have a problem with this, and that is central bank hubris. They now think that they are omnipotent, because, essentially the government has said we are going to pass over all control of the economy to the central banks, they say to everybody else including financial market participants that “you don’t know, you don’t understand, we have our models and they are right”. And that kind of hubristic approach is when you sow the seeds of your own destruction."

No follow through dollar buying against euro, yen and sterling after data showing US economyis recovering from weak Q1.  What is happening?  What is the outlook?

It has been a mostly quiet overnight session with Europe solidly green on another bout of Greek hope even as Bundesbank's Weidmann warned that Greek insolvency risks are rising and Greece reporting that its unemployment rose once more from 26.1% to 26.6% in Q1, in which we got two more rate cuts by New Zealand (which sent the Kiwi crashing the most since 2011) and South Korea (the Won initially dipped only to rebound) but China stole the stage with its latest report on retail sales, industrial production, and fixed investment all of which showed a modest bounce from multi-year lows suggesting the PBOC's attempts to shock the economy into growth may be starting to work (which is bad news for the market).

When it came to the highly confidential TPP, it was unclear just which corporations were dominant in pulling the strings. Now thanks to more documents published by Wikileaks, and analyzed by the NYT, it appears that "big pharma" is the mastermind behind the Trans Pacific Partnership, which if passed will "empower big pharmaceutical firms to command higher reimbursement rates in the United States and abroad, at the expense of consumers" according to "public health professionals, generic-drug makers and activists opposed to the trade deal."

While the Greek government has wasted the past 4 months experiment with game (and hope) theory-based negotiations with the Troika, debating what reforms it should implement, what the budget surplus should be, and how much of a pension and wage haircut the local workforce should undergo just to keep the trickle of European money flowing and "allow" the IMF to repay Greek IMF obligations and the ESM to repay the ECB, the Greek economy has slammed into a brick wall because according to Greece's retailers association, about 59 businesses close down and some 613 jobs are being lost each day.

Why has the dollar jumped in recent weeks?  Global conspriacy and lies?  Are thousands of investors and participants being deluded?  

Grit your teeth if you have to.  Cry if you want to.  US labor market is improving and the dollar is strengthening.

A man of distinction in today’s world is a man that throws his money in military monkey business, the shenanigans that our wealthiest nations excel at.