The concentration of the media on round numbers is going to drive me to drink that bottle of Pappy Van Winkle. In true philosophical inquiry, round numbers never fit in the square pegs of the unbalanced thinking at Notes From Underground. In Tuesday’s post I am going to run through several points that I’ve mentioned over the past several months. All of these issues will have some relation to the developing narrative that we are experiencing in the markets:
Posts Tagged ‘ETFs’
Notes From Underground: A Guide For The Perplexed? (Maimonides)
June 4, 2017Friday’s unemployment data showed the addition of 138,000 jobs, weaker than the ADP report. Even though the RATE dropped to 4.3% the all-important average hourly earnings rose by a tepid 0.2% and April’s data was lowered by a tenth of a percentage point. Many readers e-mailed me as to why the S&Ps and NASDAQ continued to rally in the face of weak economic news from the U.S. The BOND rally made sense as investors continued to cover short positions, but what is perplexing is the continued strength in the precious metals and the currencies despite a strong U.S. equity market.
Notes From Underground: How many rumors can sit on top of the media pinheads?
November 9, 2010Today saw an unwinding of some of the more frothy positions that have been built up since the FOMC announcement on SEPTEMBER 21. All asset classes, from stocks to commodities, have been rallying as the FED promised that it would do what it could to insure against the onset of a deflationary spiral. Many news outlets reported that the silver markets broke hard after CME GROUP raised margins on SILVER positions. The talking heads compared this to the Hunt brothers in 1980, which is COMPLETE UNADULTERATED RUBBISH. The margin increase was relatively small and nowhere near the type of actions taken in 1980 when some nearby silver contracts had a margin of 100 percent of the value of the contract. Also, margin rates are relatively low on a value of contract basis and as we also know much of the investment in silver is taking place in the ETF market where the future exchanges have zero influence.