JEast
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Posts posted by JEast
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It has been mentioned here before, so giving the subject its own tag due to possible macro and geo-political impacts going forward.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2014/02/nicaragua-canal/
Cheers
JEast
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In the case of interesting dynamics, I recall asking a Columbian friend living in the US a few years ago why they changed their mind about not moving back home. The response was that it was now too expensive living in Columbia because the expats were driving up the prices with their Euros. I guess that situation may change or at least have a non-inflationary force. The ebb and flow of the macro world is surely complex.
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Brides are part of many business plans in some parts of the world, but I find it very ironic and funny to bribe someone for printing money.
Cheers
JEast
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It continues to amaze, me at least, that we as a species have to capacity to over-produce nearly everything. And especially if you get the incentives wrong as what appears to have happened in Thailand.
Cheers
JEast
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Rumor on possible acquisition by Thomas Cook.
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It appears very marketing savvy on Mr. Bass' part to place a small trade on a very contrarian topic to get some airtime.
On the other hand, maybe he has a barbell strategy with his other wager via shorting the lowest interest rate bonds with the strongest currency on the planet and buying the highest interest rate bonds with the weakest currency on the planet.
Cheers
JEast
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We seldom talk about commodities (except for the Great White North Gold Bugs), but found the comments on cotton supplies in a recent Bloomberg article interesting.
Global cotton output will exceed demand for a fourth year, with global stockpiles on July 31 reaching 97.6 million bales, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates. That’s almost double the amount held in 2011 and is enough to make 16 t-shirts for every person on the planet, industry data show.Maybe a typo but that is one heck of a lot of shirts! The Reverend Malthus must be rolling in his grave.
Cheers
JEast
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Of course we all know that there never was anything as 'naked shorting' as all the toadies told us, now don't we :)
Noticed a brief update.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/florida-state-professors-settle-naked-232818737.html
Cheers
JEast
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Sorry jay21 for my somewhat inarticulate question. Yes, LUK is in the meat processing business but seems to be more of a demographic play, though profitable one.
My question is more of a second level question. If all the processors recognize they need more protein, what happens if we get a big 2-3 year cycle of price inflation (not 6 months) that the processors can not pass along after contract renewals (think back to the '70s). Who gets hurt? The processors, the middle man, the big boxes. Maybe all, but someone always gets squeezed harder than the other.
Just attempting to contradicted myself as I am still in the disinflation camp.
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Not a new story but I have not read much on possible implications of protein inflation except that more folks will want extra protein in their diet across the globe. There have been a few very short episodes of protein inflation in the chicken markets and maybe milk, but they did not cause too much damage from memory. What if either chicken or meats go into a longer term cycle, who gets hurt – the processers? Some common names come to mind like Hormel, Tyson, or even McDonalds, but they also seem too big and diversified to make a call one way or the other. Anyone have a view in this space?
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One of the few books that I have read in awhile that I could not put down.
The accomplishments of the principals of the 'Twice Blessed Generation" are astounding but then so sad that they wanted more.
A good book on many fronts from the historical aspects of South Asian immigration to basic financial history.
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A brief macro-drama update. Some may recall the one hit wonder song by The Vapors "Turning Japanese". If so, are we all turning Japanese with low inflation ahead outside of Venezuela and Argentina with their 1950s price controls model? And why is the ECB so worried about deflation with their November rate cut? I guess because inflation is at about 0.5% in Europe for the year and far short of the 2% target.
If the ¥en goes to to 120, expect Asia to start exporting deflation in mass.
Draghi faces deflation threat as ECB, BOE meet
Cheers
JEast
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A biased opinion about Marty Whitman, Martin Shubik, and Fernando Diz's books.
I too think the books are very difficult to read and are not for the casual investor, but for the semi-professional to professional investor. That said, the books are somewhat like 'you get it in 5 hours, or you don't.' :)
On the other hand, Whitman and Shubik's Aggressive Conservative Investor has been one of the most influential books in my investing career.
Cheers
JEast
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Looks like we have fifteen (15) brave souls meeting the minimum requirements. Brave souls that were tempted to play fate with Mr. Market. Also looks like a few repeat names, so for you contrarians, your signal to buy plenty of calls.
Cheers
JEast
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In the spirit of determining how potentially hard investing can be, and more importantly, to have a little fun with board member cohorts, I put forward a friendly contest. The goal is set for a bogey of negative 10% alpha against our global benchmark of MSCI ACWI since we are a global board.
If you care to join the party in our intellectual contest, your list must contain a portfolio of at least 10 positions (no more than 20) and for you crafters out there, the positions must be available for trading. The list is to be presented in alphabetical order with equal weighting. Portfolio entries accepted up until January 4th 2014. A tally of the entries will be conducted as of November 30th 2014 to see how many contestants’ portfolios actually exceeded the MSCI ACWI just to spite us. A portfolio from contestant #1 follows below:
Contestant #1
AMZN
ANF
AZO
BBBY
CPA
CRM
EVEP
FMD
LULU
MNST
NFLX
PHI
PNRA
STRA
UAN
WSM
6.25% Each Position
Let the games commence!
As this is primarily an intellectual exercise, one should invert caveat emptor heavily.
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Nice white paper by William Bernstein on how increased wealth actually produces reduced returns and lower interest rates.
http://larrysiegeldotorg.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/the-paradox-of-wealth-v2-formatted.pdf
Confession is in order that the thesis feeds my on bias here as I continue my guilty pleasure of watching the Japan macro-drama and its potential wakes.
Cheers
JEast
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Conventional consensus is that markets are rising because there is no where else to put one's capital. My own pet theory is that the market knows profit margins are going to stay high as no sane business manager is going to hire anyone with radical uncertainty in both business regulations and healthcare costs in the US.
On the whole, there is no simple answer as markets are complex and know more than we do.
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Starting to see why the ECB cut rates.
IMF cuts Russian GDP for 2013/14, Romania cut rates a few weeks ago, Hungary cuts rates too.
Getting interesting as the US markets continue the rise against the wall of worry.
Cheers
JEast
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On Grantham and Co., may this side effort has 'clouded' his judgement :)
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Outside my day job, I find the macro tourism discussion actually interesting. I somewhat deem it as a game of central banker versus central banker and who blinks first. No blink yet, but getting closer as the ECB is giving hints. Noticed that the year-to-date inflation rate of Germany is in negative territory and probably reason for some of the ECB noise.
http://www.tariffnumber.com/news/1867/Producer-prices-in-October-2013-0-7-on-October-2012.html
My knuckle dragging view is that the ¥en will be the key causation. Anything above say ¥115-120 (not there yet) will clearly cause Korea and others in the region to fight back. If so, start buying Korean preferreds and maybe long bonds as Asia will again be exporting deflationary pressures.
Cheers
JEast
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As it appears that the inter-bank market will remain broken in the US for a little longer and will not return to normalcy anytime soon, noticed that it looks like the ECB is floating a story that they may soon go to negative rates for excess cash as their inter-bank market remains broken too.
Cheers
JEast
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I recently read a very good article on how hard it is to get your arms around a particular subject if you do not have the correct descriptive language of the subject or phenomenon at hand. Case in point presently is that we have little in the way to describe the new global macro policies except that it is big and we have never gone down this path before.
In Edelweiss Journal's November 4th issue, author Dylan Grice makes the case that we have inadequate language to describe inflation. To paraphrase the first paragraph,
“as for the economy, we know only this: it is a complex adaptive system. From these observations can be derived a straightforward corollary on economic policy makers: trying to control a variable you can not measure (inflation) with a tool you do not fully understand (money) in a complex system with hidden, unobservable and non-linear interrelationships (the economy) is a guaranteed way to ensure that most things which happen were not supposed to happen.”Maybe our (my) true lack of descriptive terms is why it is so confusing to even determine the correct sign (plus or minus) of a single output, namely inflation.
http://www.edelweissjournal.com
No charge for access.
Cheers
JEast
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Around the World, Inflation Is Falling to Levels Not Seen for Years
Britain reported that its annual inflation rate fell to a four-year low of 2.2 percent. France reported that its annual inflation rate was just 0.6 percent, also a four-year low. The latest rates in Germany (1.2 percent), Spain (1.3 percent) and Italy (0.8 percent) are three-year lows.Cheers
JEast
Non-Inflation Thread
in General Discussion
Posted
One or two data points do not make a trend, but thought we should have a voyeur thread on what is happening around the globe to watch the interaction between the central macro maestros and what Ludwig Von Mises calls 'human action.' From this observer, it looks like a cat and mouse game for the last several years. Though many on this board (and many high profile folks) feel that inflation is inevitable, human action seems to be taking the upper hand in a few isolated places. Of course, the hour glass of time will tell.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/europes-hot-new-export-is-deflation-2014-03-12
Cheers
JEast