Why wouldn’t it be?
Here is the 1-year change for Equity, Commodity and Bond Markets (all as of end of day December 13, 2018),
Equities
Red almost everywhere with China down 20%, Germany down 16%, South Korea down 15%, U.S. almost flat (Dow Jones and S & P 500 flat with NASDAQ 100 up 6%) and star performer Brazil up 21%
The overall tax-to-GDP ratio, which is the sum of taxes and net social contributions as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, stood at 40.2% in the European Union (EU) in 2017 and 41.4% of GDP for the Eurozone in 2017. These were the highest ever levels for both the European Union and Eurozone.
Continue reading “EU and Eurozone Tax to GDP ratio at highest ever level”
We have written lesser than we normally do over the past two weeks. Things should get back to normal by Wednesday, December 12.
We will write about the current U.S. fiscal situation in depth later during the month but in the meanwhile here is the story in some graphs.
The total Federal debt (doesn’t include individual state debt) now stands at $21.52 trillion,
Continue reading “The current U.S. fiscal situation in graphs”
There are charts out there that compare the Deutsche Bank stock price to the Lehman Brothers stock price. Here’s a long-term Deutsche Bank stock price chart,
Continue reading “Is Deutsche Bank really the next Lehman Brothers?”
The U.S. 10-year Treasury constant maturity yield minus the 2-year Treasury constant maturity yield spread has been a good indicator of past recessions. Yield curve inversion which happens when the spread turns negative and has preceded the last seven straight recessions. The 10-year Treasury constant maturity yield minus the 2-year Treasury constant maturity yield is the lowest since the last recession at only 10 bps.
Continue reading “The yield curve inversion plus why banks and banking stocks are impacted by it”
November 2018 saw big falls for Oil with WTI down 22% and Brent down 20.8%. Equities turned largely positive after a disastrous October with the S & P 500 up 2% and NASDAQ 100 up 0.5% during November. Asia was positive too with the Hong Kong HSI Seng Index up 6.2% and the Japanese NIKKEI up 2%. European Stocks performed badly though with the German DAX down 1.7% and the Portuguese PSI down 3.1%. The biggest loser was Bitcoin, down 37% during the month.
The European Central Bank (ECB) only started its Quantitative Easing (or QE) program in March 2015 in order to fight ultralow inflation in the Eurozone (also called the Euro Area). It somewhat worked by weakening the Euro (€), increasing exports, giving the stock market a boost and drastically lowering financing costs for European governments and corporations. This caused the ECB balance sheet to soar over €4.5 trillion or 45% of Eurozone GDP.
Households in Canada are accumulating debt at the slowest pace in 35 years as interest rates continue to rise. Household credit growth has slowed to 3.5%, the slowest since 1983.
$700 billion lost in (notional) value this year already. Like they say – never try and catch a falling knife,
