Latest Stories

Heat maps, Ro-Ro transformation or the great disconnect ?

27 — Fri, 17 May 2013 10:44 UTC

Heat maps and correlation trades, that was the main theme over the past 6 to 7 years. In the charts above, it marks the dominant presence of red and dark blue spots, indicating various pairs of assets are either heavily negative or positive correlated to each other when it comes to price movements. It became known as Ro-Ro or Risk-on-Risk-off mode of financial ...

FX space billiards

27 — Mon, 13 May 2013 11:06 UTC

"When you put all the pieces together, my guess is that the next in line will be Australia", Econoshock 16/04/13 Beggar thy neighbor in full swing. Well, it took about a ...

"Further veering up from what makes sense"

27 — Wed, 08 May 2013 08:42 UTC

Last October, we already covered some nasty evolutions on the prices of US farmland http://www.econoshock.be/the-heartland-as-good-as-it-gets-folks It seems that today, also ...

Travel Log - Balticum

27 — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:36 UTC

Late November I missed my appointment in the Baltics but I stated back then that one day I would visit this Nordic hub. And thanks to VOKA Antwerp Chamber I achieved so last week. ...

Death by Excel and the power of Mach 10 media

27 — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 14:18 UTC

How sad, how sad to celebrate the liberty of media globalization in such a way. I am referring to the recent Rogoff-Reinhart incident or already better known as the R-R-gate. Some people discovered a mistake - an excel programmed calculation error - which puts the R-R thesis of "post crisis slow growth in a debt > 90% of GDP ...

Beggar thy neighbour in full swing...

27 — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 08:48 UTC

...and we have our first victim under the category "to export your problems or not, that's the question" : South Korea. When "Abenomics" was announced for the first time late November, markets already anticipated on a huge Japanese support program in budgetary terms and in monetary terms to create inflation and weaken the currency. ...

Housing, a new business cycle shelter ?

27 — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 15:52 UTC

A couple of months ago, we already discovered some green shoots in the US economy with some cautious revival signs in the housing sector after 5 years of blood, sweat and tears. Today we see that more and more optimistic surveys point to hope on the good old brick coming to the rescue once again. What's the state of play as far as ...

Liquidity carpet bombing

27 — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 09:51 UTC

?The risk is we stay in this climate too long and that the carpet bombing of liquidity spurs inflation. Though there are no current signs of consumer price inflation, there is inflation, perhaps a bubble, in some asset classes. Segments of property markets across the globe, for example London, also display symptoms of this. ...

Henry Fonda

27 — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 08:33 UTC

Friday and we like to take a detour to a classic movie, a Sidney Lumet 1-acter dating from 1957 starring a host of star actors, not in the least Henry Fonda. At stake is the life of a young Latino and what seems apparently to be a clear cut case for the jury, is not so straightforward for Henry Fonda. He doubts the evidence of the ...

Update BRICS and Global Finance

27 — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 11:07 UTC

We shouldn't be surprised after all but today came the news that BRICS - Brazil, India, China, Russia and S-Africa - are a bit fed up with the international world of finance. Last year we already commented on the fact that they were willing to come to the rescue wrt the sovereign debt crisis in the developed world, provided their ...

Friday's "light" take on Silver

27 — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 13:44 UTC

Since QE went into 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 and now global with Japan trying to break world records, gold has received quite some attention. But next to gold, we have a commodity named silver and this commodity has recently returned into the spotlight. Silver is an industrial commodity but most of all it has been subject of attention ...

Russia cornered in the Mediterranean ?

27 — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 09:46 UTC

Cyprus and the bail-out. Excuse me, depositors' "bail-in" deal and the visit to the hairdresser. About the rescue package and the fact that private savings' accounts are partially confiscated, already a lot of criticism has arisen. Economic sense or nonsense ? Or are other major forces at work here ? On the deal itself, it's a ...

Friday's Funny Mortgage - Cut the crap, everybody rich !

27 — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 07:39 UTC

At the start of this crisis, the following slide show went across the globe. It's hilarious and at the same time very well explains what happened in the run up to the credit crisis and how everything in the end got screwed up. So before turning to 2013, please have a look at the following appetizer for today: The sub-prime ...

Giuoco pianissimo, Naval intelligence & the Belgian budget

27 — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 10:46 UTC

It's budget time again in Belgium so it's always interesting to catch up with recent political statements on what we can expect from it. There was some confusion last week when Rue de la Loi thought that a majority of professional economist heralded the idea of "piano" austerity : don't exaggerate with austerity because you ...

Friday's reality check on "OIKONOMIA"

27 — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 13:16 UTC

Today we learned that Belgium is still a global leader in government in governmental support of the economy when it comes to the budget. An sich this should not be a problem, provided you get something in return for what you pay for. Reality however strikes hard and even with this 51% governmental occupation on the economy - even ...

"It's not a one way bet..."

27 — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 10:36 UTC

Another chapter in the ongoing stories of currency wars has kicked off and this time we have some complaints from down under. Well, not entirely because for some the problem has been solved by Mrs Watanabe 5000 miles up north. It seems the popular carry trade Aussie$/JPY has been reversed with some mass capital outflows from out of ...

Friday Fun : cash stripped auf Deutsch !

27 — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 15:32 UTC

"Main country's industries: printing and production of a small amount of mosaics and staff uniforms, world-wide banking and financial activities ; Electricity production of 442 MWh from solar panels, complemented by electricity imports from Italy ; currency is EUR and for practical reasons, X is depending on Italy for practical ...

Shiny collateral - opening up a gold debate

27 — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 11:57 UTC

A lot of new comments have showed up recently on gold and especially the gold fever of some central banks. The objective of this blog is to shed some light on the numbers and the possible implications going forward. First of all the numbers and more important, the evolution of the numbers. From the World Gold Council, we could ...

An investor cancer bet turning soar - empty shelves

27 — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 10:44 UTC

Sometimes the inevitable just is bound to happen and what happened over the weekend in Caracas is no surprise either. The Venezuelian government decided to devalue the currency with 32% overnight. And the problem lies of course in completely wrong budgeting based upon completely wrong expectations regarding oil production and oil ...

Friday's weekly roundup : COBRA revisited

27 — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 10:00 UTC

Again a week with some interesting trends in the world of banking. The good news comes from Sweden were banks are told to stop capitalizing themselves and start lending again. Rating agency Fitch proudly announced the following : "The Swedish banking sector can handle a projected slump in house prices as deep as 10% without ...

More on Japan and "Babel" economics

27 — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 11:49 UTC

A discussion is taking place between Paul Krugman in reply to an analysis from JP Morgan's chief Japan economist Masaaki Kanno. The points they are raising are the relative success of Abe-economics and the riddle why markets behave quite differently. Is it such a riddle ? Starting point is the fact that the JPY has lost a ...

In front of the steam roller...

27 — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 10:49 UTC

...and picking up pennies, something which lately has been on a lot of people's mind, including myself for one. For a bond portfolio manager, we have indeed arrived at a point where we have entered ludicrous territory. But it can get worse, proven by the situation of the following pension fund manager ventilating his dismay over ...

Economic slack ? - Car wheels on a gravel road

27 — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 09:23 UTC

Some GDP number releases yesterday apparently took some observers by surprise and we are not referring to the Belgian ones. Now we knew that most structural growth paths in numerous developed - and developing economies as well - would shift into lower gear following deleverageing, be it in private or public sector. But like most ...

Sunday's book review : FX wars - Disorder

27 — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 07:51 UTC

"One of the scariest books I've read. The picture that emerges is dark yet comprehensive and satisfying" - Bloomberg Business Week review. "Let's hope he's wrong" - Financial Times. With some delay, we read the the 2011/2012 bestseller of James Rickards. And though the content and reading did not feel so scary initially, some of ...