Jack the Pipper

I could tell you this article is an alley-oop, that buying the Australian dollar right now is a slam dunk.

The Japanese yen trade isn’t as easy as it used to be. Many, including me, did well during the huge rally in USD/JPY from the low 77.11 on 14 Sep 2012 to the high of 103.73 on 24 May 2013–a whopping 34.52% gain in just 179 day.

I’ve been trudging through Prof. Michael Pettis’ latest book, The Great Rebalancing: Trade, Conflict, and the Perilous Road Ahead for the World Economy. I think it’s excellent. I’ve learned a lot.

About four years ago we shared with our clients these nine reasons to support our belief the dollar had entered a multi-year bull market back in March 2008.

As you know from reading our daily missives, guesses, and attempts at independent thought, we are big believers in feedback loops, which tend to create self-reinforcing cycles over all time frames(the fractal nature of markets, as it were).

I think Peter Schiff is very good at explaining how political economy should operate. But it seems his market and economic forecasts, in anything but the very long term, tend to be similar one-way bets. 

The emerging (developing) market [EM]) currencies are getting clobbered. It seems the idea of EM growth as far as the eye can see, as once heralded by the BRIC lovers, is fading fast.

We could soon witness a sharp and steep, though perhaps short-lived, rally in Treasury prices.

I think market lore (folk lore/wisdom/knowledge) falls into three different categories: 1) right, 2) sometimes right, or 3) total nonsense.

Most of the headlines this morning blame yesterday’s market fallout on expectations of Fed tapering. Many are citing the improvement in US economic data as evidence the Fed doesn’t need to keep its bond and MBS purchases going.