Data for charts are sourced from FRED, OECD, Eurostat, IMF, BIS, Market Watch, Yahoo/Google Finance, Investing.com, COT, Bloomberg or Quandl unless otherwise stated.
Financial market pundits are a bit like dogs chasing cars; they wouldn’t know what to do if they caught one. And so it is that after trying to figure out whether the economy and markets would achieve a soft landing in the wake of the post-Covid tightening cycle, no one quite knows what to think now that the soft landing appears to have arrived.
Let’s list the key requirements for a soft landing.
Read MoreIt’s been quite a year. I am inclined to say that next year can’t be worse, but that would probably jinx it. Also, for owners of financial assets, 2020 has been a great year, even if the economy, and event the fabrics of society, have been stretched to a breaking point. The main question for 2021 is whether this imbalance can continue? I’ll continue to investigate that question on the blog in the new year. I also hope to be able to do some more videos and podcasts.
Apart from that, all that is left for me is to wish all my readers a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. I am very grateful for the attention you afford this little corner of the internet. I know time is a scarce resource, and the content I share is guided by that consideration. I also wish a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to my fellow narrative-warriors and collaborators on Twitter.
Read MoreAnother year almost gone, and in this case a decade too. 2019 has been a great run for anyone with even random exposure to financial assets, and in my next few posts I’ll try to map out what I think will be the main themes for 2020. I will also update the portfolio page, and discuss what went right and what went wrong on that front in 2019. It’s been a good year overall—how couldn’t it have been?—with a few costly mistakes, as per usual. I have also recently updated my writer’s page, effectively internalising that part of my work fully on this site. Go have a look! In time, I will incorporate some of my non-fiction work on this platform too. I have plenty of ideas and projects rattling around in my head, though precious little time to finish them, which is just about as good as you get it as a writer, I guess. The Podcast and Video platforms will continue too, but I am yet figure out exactly how to leverage these in a way that makes sense.
Apart from that, all that is left for me is to wish all my readers a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. They say that blogs are dying, but I don’t buy it. In any case, I’ll keep writing, and listening, because that is what I do. On that note, I also wish a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to my fellow narrative-warriors and collaborators on Twitter. The quality of conversation on that platform ranges from being counterproductive, stupid, and vicious to being indispensable for my work and thinking. Luckily, the latter characteristic still dominates, for now.
See you in 2020.
Read MoreIf you were pinned down and had to summarize the economic and political discourse since the financial crisis in one line, I reckon many would settle one a version that includes income inequality and political polarisation. But this is probably where the agreement ends. Ask ten so-called thought-leaders about the drivers and impact of these two trends, and you’re likely to get ten wildly different answers. In his new book, The Myth of Capitalism, my former colleague Jonathan Tepper, and his co-author Denise Hearn, provide a razor-sharp synthesis of an economy and markets which are increasingly devoid of the virtues that we tend to ascribe to them.
The book’s central message is microeconomic in nature—the market power of one or few firms is going parabolic in one industry after the other—but its implications are profoundly macroeconomic. The plummeting share of labour and wages in firms’ profit and capital creation, the soaring inequality between owners of capital and workers, and the increasing sense that the system is rigged against the median household and individual. Jonathan’s and Denise’ book offers important insight to illuminate all of these issues.
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