The Confident Consumer
US consumer confidence rose for the fourth consecutive month in October, and has now reached an 18-year high. But while this is certainly an impressive milestone, the sharp increase hasn’t […]
Author Archives: jsblokland
Midterm Elections – Stock markets tend to go up from here
The US midterm elections are behind us. As expected the Democrats took the House while Republicans hold the Senate. So what happens now? Surely we can’t tell, but if history […]
Why is the euro not trading at parity with the dollar?
The divergence between the Eurozone and the US is growing. And I’m not just talking about the difference in bond yields. Significant gaps have also developed between equity markets and […]
Turkey’s currency crisis – what you should know
The Turkish lira has taken a heavy pounding recently as investors have started to doubt the country’s creditworthiness and economic outlook. At the time of writing, the value of the […]
The biggest bull!
Here’s a quick update on a very insightful graph that was published last month by Visual Capitalist, a digital media brand that uses visualization to make investment themes more accessible. […]
The Power of Earnings!
There has been a lot to do about equity valuations in the last couple of years, especially when it comes to US price-earnings ratios. But at times investors seem to […]
The World Cup Effect!
Tomorrow, the biggest sports event on earth gets underway. The soccer World Cup will take over daily life in many countries of the world. Unfortunately, this will not be the […]
Sell in May!
The Sell in May effect, refers to the market anomaly that pretty much all of the return on stocks is realized in the months November through April, while there is […]
When will China’s economy start to slow?
China reported a 6.8% year-on-year economic growth number for the first quarter. Again, the lack of volatility in the GDP data was striking. As the chart below reveals, economic growth […]
Macro surprise indices: great insights, not so great market predictors
Macroeconomic surprise indices have become increasingly popular in recent years. To many investors they matter more than the actual macro-economic numbers, which should make macro surprise indices a useful tool […]
