The Fed’s plan to normalize its balance sheet will begin to be put in place from next month. This is passive QT or Quantitative Tightening – call it QT1 if you want… the opposite of quantitative easing. I outlined their […]
Author: Top Down Charts
ChartBrief 150 – Passive Quantitative Tightening
As expected (by me and pretty much everyone else) the Fed held interest rates unchanged and announced that it would commence its balance sheet normalization plan in October. The balance sheet normalization plan involves gradually ceasing reinvestment of principal from […]
A New Extreme in Volatility
The last time I reviewed this chart I pondered the possibility of a turning point or the start of a regime change for volatility… this was premature. Since then this alternative view of volatility for the S&P500 – the rolling […]
Slowing Chinese Property Market
The August data showed a further slowing of China’s property price boom, and early signs that a slowdown if not a downturn could be on the way for perhaps the world’s most important property market. The bubbly price gains in […]
Global monetary policy convergence
The big focus this week is on whether the Fed will either hike rates, announce Quantitative Tighening (QT) aka balance sheet normalization, do both, or do nothing…. but a bigger set of trends are playing out at a global level in the […]
Sentiment Survey: Bonds vs Stocks
This article reviews the data from the latest weekly sentiment survey we conduct over on Twitter. The survey measures respondents’ equity and bond positioning/view – differentiating between whether the view is bullish or bearish for technical or fundamental reasoning. The latest results […]
Global consumer sentiment rises as global equities hit new highs
The September readings of the Ipsos Consumer Sentiment surveys showed the GDP weighted global composite rebounding firmly to new highs – following in the footsteps of global equities; which have also moved on to new highs. The strength was driven […]
Bond market sentiment pre-Fed meeting
The September FOMC meeting starts on Tuesday next week. Odds are good that they either announce QT (Quantitative Tightening) or flag its impending arrival. As I previously outlined, there is an increasing case for the Fed to implement its previously […]
Economic noise strikes a cautionary tone
This article discusses an unusual but interesting indicator I designed to gauge the background economic noise emanating from an economy and show how it impacts on sentiment and reflects key underlying trends. The chart comes from the latest edition of […]
ChartCritic 6 – Bitcoin crowded?
In this edition of ChartCritic we look at a chart from the latest BofA Merrill Lynch Global Fund Manager Survey. The chart shows the survey respondents’ perceptions about what is currently the most crowded trade. At the top of the […]
ChartBrief 145 – The Reemergence Of Emerging Markets
Going through the latest numbers from the OECD Composite Leading Indicators data set I thought it would be worth sharing a couple of what I thought were particularly interesting charts. As the title suggests, they basically show the reemergence of […]
