Alhambra Investment Partners, LLC

Quick review: stocks hit a bit of a rough patch right during the height of inflation hysteria. At the end of January 2018, just as the US unemployment rate had finally achieved the very center of...

As economic data for 2019 comes in, the numbers continue to suggest more slowing especially in the goods economy. Perhaps what happened during that October-December window was a soft patch. Even if...

You know things have really changed when Economists start revising their statements more than the data. What’s going on in the global economy has quickly reached a critical stage. This...

The holiday season was shaping up to be a good one, perhaps a very good one. All the signs seemed to be pointing in that direction, especially if you were a worker. All throughout last year, beginning...

While Western markets breathed a sigh of relief that US GDP didn’t confirm the global slowdown, not yet, what was taking place over in Asia went in the other direction. There has been a sense, a...

A month behind schedule, Q4 GDP sure did disappoint. I don’t mean that it was disastrously weak, rather it came in right down the middle benefiting neither camp. The BEA’s not preliminary...

In February 2015, IHS Markit thought that the US manufacturing sector might be slowing quite against every expectation. Its final PMI reading for the month of January was 53.9, down quite a bit from...

It infects every boardroom across the world. Big business requires decent forecasting, yet time and again it seems they are deprived of what they desperately need. Instead, even after this last...

Nothing the Fed did yesterday or before changed the yield curves. Eurodollar Futures and United States Treasurys are both still inverted. The former is sharply inverted. The only thing that has...

German GDP was the smallest of positives in Q4 2018, according to figures released today by DeStatis. Following a -0.2% rate in Q3, no matter how slight the plus sign was written into every headline....

Gold is on fire, but why is it on fire? When the precious metals’ price falls, Stage 2, we have a pretty good idea what that means (collateral). But when it goes the other way, reflation or fear...

I have to agree with my colleague Joe Calhoun. Everyone thinks the Fed is (over)reacting to the stock market drop in December. There’s a little bit of truth in it, reading so many FOMC...

Men have long dreamed of optimal outcomes. There has to be a better way, a person will say every generation. Freedom is far too messy and unpredictable. Everybody hates the fat tails, unless and until...

In theory, it is always so simple. For China, it was intended that RRR cuts are a stimulus. By allowing banks to use more of the reserves they built up over the years it is meant to add to overall...

Two European officials are now on record hinting at an ECB "pause." The situation in Europe is a little different in that pausing means failing to start. QE was a failure but more than that it wasted...

And we come full circle back again. It’s not what they say, it’s what they do. Kansas City Fed CEO Esther George was at least consistent, unlike all the other voting FOMC members....