We’re moving

  After more than a year and 340 posts I pleased to announce that the Lighthouse Securities Blog is moving, well closing really. As you know I am a writer over at MacroBusiness which is clearly Australia’s leading finance, investment and economics blog. Macro Business is evolving and yesterday we released the first edition of our […]

Why Germany should save the Euro and Spain, Italy and Greece should exit

I saw this chart in a presentation last week and I reckon it summarises the conundrum that is Europe. What you are looking at on the left hand side is the Real exchange rate (TWI based) adjusted for unit labour costs. It is clear here that even with the fall in the trade weighted RER […]

China Cuts rates, Spain Downgraded, Bernanke hoses down expectations and Merkel remains recalcitrant.

By Greg McKenna In a surprise move yesterday the Chinese Central Bank cut rates by 25 basis points and gave banks more flexibility to set rates for their customers. Clearly there have been concerns about China and its growth profile over the past month or so and the news about iron ore purchase, steel trading, […]

Financial Armageddon

By Greg McKenna Readers know that I am a student of history, particularly of economic and financial market history. I was lucky enough in the early days of the crisis to read a book written in 1996 by David Hackett-Fischer called the Great Wave. It was a history of inflation and prices going back a thousand […]

US Jobs data hits markets – Aussie Dollar and Euro bounce

By Greg McKenna Stocks plunged more than 2 percent in the US on Friday as the release of a terribly low non-farm payrolls result of just 69,000 and an uptick in the unemployment rate suggest that the US recovery is faltering. The Dow has been dragged into negative territory for the year now and the […]

Sell in May – Markets have a shocker

By Greg McKenna We saw a bit of position squaring yesterday for month end after assets like the Aussie Dollar made a fresh low for the year before rallying. Likewise in US equities the early weakness gave way to a better performance but by the end of play the pressure was unable to be withstood […]

OECD – “she’ll be right but…”

The OECD released its latest global update over night and it is interesting insofar as that it takes the usual saccharine sanguine approach yet the risks are so obviously there of an undershoot of expectations that it is almost a worthless document already. Certainly the OECD highlights the problems relating to Europe and I’m probably […]

Pessimism Fatigue – Markets rally

The market selloff and fear of last week was but a memory overnight as more positive feeling buoyed equities and risk assets and put upward pressure on bond yields. The S&P 500 is up 1.6% to 1315.99, the FTSE rose 0.7% and the other Bourses of Europe were mostly higher, the Euro is back above […]

Markets – Time for a bounce?

On Saturday morning I sat down and wrote the Trading week wrap over at MacroBusiness where I looked at a number of markets and what the price action and thus the technicals, mostly, suggested about the near term direction. After a week like last week I expected to have my bearish bias reinforced but by […]

Market Rout Intensifies

I’ve posted the links and the MacroBusiness morning over at MacroBusiness today and I wanted to highlight a few things. Firstly, after a brief hiatus in Asian trade yesterday the selling returned with a vengeance overnight in equity markets as the pending Euro implosion gather steam. Indeed UK Prime Minister David Cameron ratcheted up the […]