Insight into the Impact of Credit Disequilibrium on Financial Markets
Credit cycle shift raises concerns over future consumption
The first quarter of 2018 was tough for asset allocators. Between January 26 and April 2, the S&P 500 dropped 10%, while 10 year government bond yields continued to widen. This shift in market sentiment combined with an intense newsflow of a pending global trade war...
Trump’s tariffs: A costly return to “American” values?
American trade policy and free trade have rarely been bedfellows. President Trump’s arbitrary tariffs on imports of steel (25%) and aluminium (10%) announced on March 1st might be better understood as part of an American mercantilist tradition that stretches from...
Investors should listen to Tolstoy, not Trump
In his novel, “War and Peace,” Leo Tolstoy rants at the idiocy of the intelligentsia for providing simplistic descriptions of the causes of events. The view that France invaded Russia because Napoleon gave the order and as a result, 600,000 people followed him across...
A lousy anti-trust framework not secular stagnation is the real issue
Concerns about persistent underinvestment in the U.S. economy resulting from the financial crisis are overblown. The underlying issue is that the lack of a robust anti-trust framework has made it too easy for dominant firms to increase profits. Without sufficient...
Asset Allocation in an era of Post-truth Financial Market Analysis
On March 1, the Dow plowed through the 21,000 barrier. Many market commentators sought to attribute this rise to President Trump’s congressional address the day before. Given that there was little policy detail in the speech, there seemed to be general agreement...
Donald Trump versus the bond market
The bond market reacted decisively to Donald Trump’s success in the U.S. presidential election. Ten-year treasury yields rose from 1.86% on November 8th to 2.37% on November 25th. Trump’s promise to invest $550 billion in infrastructure over the next decade in...