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Some Economics Of Place-Based Policies

Some Economics Of Place-Based Policies

When it comes to public policies for helping the poor, economists have tended to favor a focus on individuals who are poor, rather than on places that had a higher share of poor people. This seemed like a better way to target scarce public resources. There was some fear that if the focus shifted to […]
Canadian Dollar Relief Rally After Tariff Exemption

Canadian Dollar Relief Rally After Tariff Exemption

Canadian Dollar had a relief rally last week after the U.S. excluded Canada and Mexico from steel and aluminum tariffs. President Trump’s administration enacted these tariffs under section 232 Trade Expansion Act of 1982 on the ground of national security. President Trump said that the importation of steel and aluminum was “in such quantities and […]
Cursed By Momentum

Cursed By Momentum

Edgy Investors Although most investors have no edge on the market there’s a proportion of them that persist in trading actively, the main effect of which is to enrich their brokers. There are various explanations of why this occurs, but it seems to come down to some combination of inherent overconfidence and a perverse refusal […]
China Prices Include Lots Of Base Effect, Still Undershoots

China Prices Include Lots Of Base Effect, Still Undershoots

By far, the easiest to answer for today’s inflation/boom trifecta is China’s CPI. At 2.9% in February 2018, that’s the closest it has come to the government’s definition of price stability (3%) since October 2013. That, in the mainstream, demands the description “hot” if not “sizzling” even though it still undershoots. The primary reason behind the […]
9 ETF Winners From 9-Year Bull Run

9 ETF Winners From 9-Year Bull Run

The bull market is now nine years old, overcoming a plethora of challenges including debt crisis, government shutdown, the Middle East conflict, geopolitical tension, Greece turmoil, China’s soft landing issues, Japan’s recession, a global slowdown, Brexit, the oil price carnage, and Trump’s protectionist stance. In fact, the S&P 500 index has risen nearly 302% from […]
Imaginary Wage-Inflation Conundrum

Imaginary Wage-Inflation Conundrum

Economists are puzzled over the wage growth conundrum. Wages were supposed to rise significantly. They didn’t. Why? Let’s start with a look at the conundrum expressed in a Tweet. This is a confusing jobs report. US employers added the most workers since mid-2016, but hourly wages didn’t increase as much as analysts had expected. Bond […]
Why Is The US Economy Becoming More Stable?

Why Is The US Economy Becoming More Stable?

I was reviewing Thursday’s Z.1 release from the Federal Reserve and all I could think to myself was “man, this is all so boring.”Boring is good in economic terms. It means there are no outlier sectors doing weird stuff that can create future instability. But this is all part of a broader theme that I’ve […]
USD/CAD 2018 Rebound Starts To Unravel Following Mixed NFP Report

USD/CAD 2018 Rebound Starts To Unravel Following Mixed NFP Report

USD/CAD INITIATES BEARISH SERIES FOLLOWING MIXED U.S. & CANADA DATA USD/CAD slips to fresh weekly lows amid the mixed set of data prints coming out of the U.S. and Canadian economy, and recent price action raises the risk for a further decline in the dollar-loonie exchange rate as it carves a fresh series of lower […]
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                        Global Asset Allocation Update: Tariffs Don’t Warrant A Change…Yet

EC Global Asset Allocation Update: Tariffs Don’t Warrant A Change…Yet

There is no change to the risk budget this month. For the moderate risk investor the allocation to bonds is 50%, risk assets 45% and cash 5%. We have had continued volatility since the last update but the market action so far is pretty mundane. The initial selloff halted at the 200 day moving average […]
The Return Of The Euro Crisis

The Return Of The Euro Crisis

Written by insidesources Anyone who thought that the Eurozone debt crisis was resolved has not been paying attention to economic and political developments in Italy, the Eurozone’s third-largest member country. They have certainly not been focusing on how very vulnerable the Italian economy remains to a less favorable international economic environment and to more challenging global […]