Snookered
Did Jerome Powell, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, get himself into a pickle? With bond yields still on the rise, it´s starting to look that way. The markets seem to […]
Author Archives: jsblokland
Revenge of the old economy
Prices in the real economy are lagging far behind prices on the financial markets. But with a historic amount of stimulus, focused increasingly on an ‘old school’ recovery, a catchup […]
The average return doesn’t exist (2021 edition)
Welcome to this year’s update of the ‘average return doesn’t exist’ blog, revealing that the average return on equities is mostly a statistic, and is rarely seen in reality. However, […]
2020 in tweeted charts!
Welcome to the 2020 edition of ‘the year in tweeted charts’: a reasonably concise overview of the year, with some eye-popping graphs. But, also, a useful exercise to improve my […]
Bond issues
What to do about government bonds? The yield on government bonds is historically low, while the risk is high. In the event of rising inflation, they offer little or no buffer. Nevertheless, we shouldn’t ban them completely from multi-asset portfolios just yet.
Valuation puzzle
Equities are expensive. It’s difficult to argue against this. But does this also mean that markets will fall sharply? Assuming that there are plenty of other factors that could drag […]
The Great Lockdown Recession
The IMF published new estimates for the global economy, which weren’t great – to put it mildly. The coming quarters will be historically poor and the risks will remain thereafter. […]
The momentum for fiscal stimulus is building
US President Trump is calling for a payroll tax relief until after the US elections. Australia just announced a EUR 11 billion package to counter the adverse impact of the […]
It’s too early to get too gloomy about stocks
An unexpected and unfortunate outbreak of the coronavirus puts pressure on the sustainability of the increase in global growth momentum. The fact that the uptick in momentum had only just […]
The average return doesn’t exist (2020 edition)
Here’s this year’s update of the ‘average return doesn’t exist’ blog showing that the average return on equities is mostly a statistic, and is seldomly seen in reality. And last […]
