Having borrowed heavily in the bond markets in the past couple of years. If interest rates should rise substantially, a corporate CFO might be tempted to buy back their company’s debt at below par and retire its debt. Its an interesting way of making money without producing a single widget. One wonders how significant this

The sudden weakness in gold is intriguing given the acceleration in global QE most recently by the Bank of Japan. Gold has always been thought as a hedge against inflation and deflation. In fact most gold bugs would have one believe it can cure physical ailments. It is established wisdom, however, that gold is a

  The Japanese stock market is up some 40% year to date while the JPY has gone from 86 at the end of 2012 to 101 today. Wow. Is it too late to invest in Japan? I think not, but at the same time, it pays to be more circumspect.

  Our methodology is simple. Its getting it right that’s difficult. First of all, we observe, all the time, data, anecdotal evidence, trends, events and developments, everything. Then we postulate theses, what we think all the information evolving before us means. From these theses come predictions about the evolution of investable asset markets. This is

‘Abenomics’ isn’t particularly innovative. Keynesian spending funded by central bank debt monetization was popularized by the Bank of Japan as an ineffective tool to raise output since before every Western Central bank and its accessories multiplied their balance sheets post 2008, with some surprising success. Japan has tried this before with little success, so is