Archive for March, 2008
food prices
This was a cover from the Economist back in December. I might have blogged about it before, but it is quickly turning into a big story.
Over the past few weeks, rice exporting countries all over Asia and the Middle East have started raising minimum prices and placing other restrictions on the export of rice.
If people [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Tags: markets economics inflation
Taleb takes a fairly dim view of the discipline of history. Where it isn’t tainted by a survivorship bias (aka “history is written by the winners”), he claims that it tends to be tainted by man’s natural desire to have things make sense by inventing causal relationships between events that may be purely [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Tags: philosophy markets
It has taken me a while to get around to writing my promised series of posts about The Black Swan. Here we go.
One of the more interesting points that Taleb makes in his book is that the only thing more difficult than predicting the future is predicting the past.
He uses a simple analogy [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Tags: philosophy
no soup for you
Marketwatch is reporting that JP Morgan Chase is trying to raise its offer price for Bear Stearns to $10. That’s up from the $2 that was arranged in last weekend’s Fed-brokered shotgun wedding.
I hope the Fed comes back and says “NO!” In fact, I think they should force the number down to $1, just to [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
silent alarm
This is a chart of the 13-week US T-Bill discount rate index. It is alarming stuff, and particularly curious that it continued to drop throughout the week, even after the stock market put in its lows on Monday.
Yields on the long end of the curve dropped as well, which is even more surprising.
In 30 [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
silver & gold
Below are two charts of the SLV and GLD ETFs that track the price of silver and gold respectively.
It is interesting that both really started to take off the August blow-up of the 2 Bear Stearns hedge funds and the unofficial kick-off of the credit crunch.
Also interesting is the fact that silver was up 30+% [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
liquidation
Treasuries rallied today. Commodities and commodity-related equities sold off. Emerging markets sold off. Yesterday’s gains on the NASDAQ were completely erased.
Everything that has shown strength over the last 3 months has started to be met with heavy selling pressure, particularly in agriculture and mining.
Did today mark the beginning of a massive liquidation?
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Tags: markets
financial irony
It is a curious irony that when the fed lowers short term interest rates–as it almost certainly will on Tuesday–a likely side effect may be that long term rates, including mortgage rates, will go up.
Why?
Monetary easing risks rising inflation. Rising inflation means that the fixed interest payments on the amount borrowed will decrease over time. [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
energy cost containment
It struck me today that clean tech and green tech might be defining their objectives in a nonconstructive manner.
Jettison clean tech and green tech monikers and try this one on for size: energy cost containment.
The thinking is that sooner or later clean tech and green tech will be the next generation versions of the horseless [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
