Market Overview

In November 2011, with yields on 10-year debt securities at more than 7%, things were looking very bad for Italy. The country was trapped in a kind of bad equilibrium characterized by low output, high...

Economic events seem to be throwing up a large number of paradoxes at the moment. Although many of them are merely apparent, some are instructive. The eurozone is struggling to pull out of its major...

Market movers ahead Lower inflation has strengthened the case for further ECB easing as soon as the meeting next week. In the US, we expect non-farm payrolls to increase by 165,000, driven mainly by...

In his preface to the new edition of The Invisible Hands: Top Hedge Fund Traders on Bubbles, Crashes, and Real Money (Wiley, 2014) Steven Drobny contends that “real money investors remain stuck...

Yesterday’s US GDP number was a lesson in looking through the internals of a data release. The headline number of 3.2% annualised was as expected but the components that drove that growth are up...

The number of new claims for unemployment benefits being filed in the US spiked more than expected last week. However, data, when we look at the trend, show an improvement.Initial claims for state...

■ Confidence kept on increasing in the eurozone. The Economic Sentiment Indicator (ESI), which tracks GDP growth relatively well, gained 0.5 point in January, reaching 100.9, its highest level...

■ In January, the jobless rate was unchanged at 6.8%, after December data was revised downward from 6.9% to 6.8%. It is thus standing an inch above the twenty-year low of May 2012 at 6.7%■...

“When you’re on fire, people get out of your way. ” – Richard PryorIt was the momentum traders this week that brought Richard Pryor to my mind. They really do wear their hearts...

• Eurozone unemployment rate to remain steady at 12.1%• Euro area flash CPI to edge up to 0.9%• Personal income in the US forecast to come in at 0.1%The last trading day of the month is...

Central Banks Dominate The MarketThe FOMC meeting went as expected – a further reduction in its monthly bond purchases of USD 10bn and no significant changes in the statement or its forward...

Note from dshort: The charts in this commentary have been updated to include the Q4 2013 Advance Estimate.The chart below is my way to visualize real GDP change since 2007. I've used a stacked column...

Earlier today we learned that the Advance Estimate for Q4 2013 real GDP came in at 3.2 percent, down from 4.1 percent in Q3, but in line with most forecasts. Let's now review the latest numbers on a...

I spoke to Varney & Company’s Charles Payne this morning about the emerging market selloff and what is driving it.At its heart? Current account deficits.  Turkey, South Africa,...