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USD gets curb-stomped after the FED

March 19, 2015 by Matt McCracken
The USD is declining precipitously against marjor trading partners after the FED said something or didn't say something. Maybe they added a word or took out a word and somehow with a flick of a butterfly's wings, the USD is acting like the US is a...Read more

Habakkuk 2:6

March 19, 2015 by Matt McCracken
Each morning, I recieve the Daily Texts from the Moravian Church . I thought one of the versus' quoted today was apropos in light of Janet Yellen's testimony this week: "Woe to him who piles up stolen goods and makes himself wealthy by extortion!...Read more

In yellen we trust...

February 23, 2015 by Matt McCracken
The headline story on Bloomberg yesterday was titled, "In yellen we trust is Bond Mantra as Inflation Dismissed.” This story line is obviously a play on the American patriotic motto “In God we Trust”. So in the minds of investors, has the FED...Read more

Moscow-led trade bloc and the Uranium market

January 2, 2015 by Matt McCracken
Armenia joined the Russian-led trade bloc that previously included Belarus and Kazakhstan. While these countries may seem insignficant in most sectors of the worldwide economy, Kazakhstan is actually very signfigant in one small but important market...Read more

Is the a commodity backed Ruble coming?

December 22, 2014 by Matt McCracken
The crashing Russian Ruble has been the big story line from the past couple of weeks. From here, there are only two options for the currency. Continue to crash on its way to zero or breakout out of the parabolic downtrend and rebound. While the...Read more
USO performance dispersion

The Epic Failure of Commodity Funds

July 24, 2014 by Matt McCracken
The strong performance of commodities since the end of the tech bubble has attracted quite a lot of interest and assets under management to the space. Prior to 1999, there were virtually no public funds trading commodity futures on US exchanges (...Read more

FED's Interest rate hike and the USD

March 14, 2014 by Matt McCracken
The popular view is higher interest rates should be supportive of the underlying currency. The idea is simply that a higher yielding currency is more attractive to investors. And given that the USD is the only major currency yielding anything, the...Read more

"Act of God" blamed for Bad Unemployment Report

February 4, 2011 by Matt McCracken
This morning I turned on one of the financial media stations to see what was going on in the markets and the big news was the BLS Employment Report which provided some not-so-optimistic figures. A couple analysts on the show were cackling about how...Read more

The Tower of Babel Indicator

July 8, 2009 by Matt McCracken
3 They began saying to each other, “Let’s make bricks and harden them with fire.” (In this region bricks were used instead of stone, and tar was used for mortar.) 4 Then they said, “Come, let’s build a great city for ourselves with a tower that...Read more

Greenspan's "Conundrum"

April 20, 2009 by Matt McCracken
If you watch or read any of the financial media outlets, you've heard of the "Flattening/Inverted Yield Curve". Greenspan has referred to it as a “Conundrum” since long-bond yields have fallen while he repeatedly increases the overnight Federal...Read more