When communications between intelligence agencies suddenly spike, as has recently been the case, I sit up and take note. Hey, you don’t think I talk to all of those generals because I like their snappy uniforms, do you? The word is that the despotic, authoritarian regime in Syria is on the verge of collapse, and [...]

I was researching comparative Asian wage data the other day and was astounded with what I found. Textile workers earn $2.99 an hour in India (PIN), $1.84 in China (FXI), and $0.49 in Vietnam (VNM). This is an 18-fold increase in labor costs from $0.10 an-hour since Chinese industrialization launched in 1978. This compares to [...]

I certainly hope you took my advice to load your portfolio with corn and gold and to dump your equities five years ago. What? You didn’t? Then you have almost certainly suffered on the performance front. According to data compiled by my former employer, the Financial Times, corn was the top performing asset class since [...]

During my recent meeting with the senior portfolio managers of the big Swiss banks, I kept hearing the same word over and over: yield, yield, yield! The search for yield by end investors has become so overwhelming that it now trumps all other considerations. So I am starting a series of major pieces on the [...]

It is a fact of life that markets get overstretched. Think of pulling on a rubber band too hard, or loading too many paddlers at one end of a canoe. Whatever the metaphor, the outcome is always unpleasant and sometimes disastrous. Take a look at the charts below and you can see how extended markets [...]

The Treasury bond market has just suffered one of the most horrific selloffs in recent memory, taking the yield on ten year paper up from 1.38% to an eye popping 1.83% in weeks, a three month high. Yields have just risen by an amazing 38%. This has dragged the principal Treasury bond ETF (TLT) down [...]

Gold has clearly evolved into a call option on global quantitative easing. Don’t think of it just as the stuff your dentist puts in your teeth or the thing your girlfriends gets you to wrap around her finger anymore. I don’t think that the Federal Reserve will implement QE3 at its September 16-17 meeting, or [...]

If volatility and lack of direction in the equity market are driving you nuts these days, thank your lucky stars you’re not in the oil market. Only last night, a Japanese supertanker plowed into a US Navy destroyer, causing prices to spike. That’s assuming that you had time to notice while sifting through numerous, contradictory [...]