What is ‘Animal Spirits’? “Animal Spirits is a term used by the famous British economist, John Maynard Keynes, to explain financial and buying decisions in conditions of uncertainty. In Keynes’ 1936 publication, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, animal spirits describes the human emotion that drives consumer confidence. In modern economic terms, animal spirits describes the psychological […]
Intuitive Finance
Disruption! The Music Indicator Part III – Protest Songs Support Equities (!)
Chicago by Graham Nash (May 28, 1971) “So your brother’s bound and gagged And they’ve chained him to a chair Won’t you please come to chicago just to sing In a land that’s known as freedom how can such a thing be fair Won’t you please come to chicago for the help that we can bring We […]
Disruption! The Music Indicator…more! A confirmation?
Listen to the music…. Disrupting the disrupters… The sequel for Mamma Mia and ABBA music represent the desire for feeling good and escaping the tensions of the real world. It reminds us of happier moments even though our memories may be playing tricks on us (with this in mind, take some time to visit […]
Imagine the Unimaginables Q1 2018 Update – “Markets are angry!”
Last December, IAV published a list of Capital Market Unimaginables for 2018 (link) with lots of charts and now lets see how things progressed in the first quarter… Now what can happen in 2018 that most cannot imagine, here is the original list: Unimaginable #1: More of the Same – Business as Usual — Markets continue to […]
Are Productivity Growth and the Stock Market About to Become Correlated?
Food for Thought… are we at inflection point on productivity growth? This article from the NY Times, “The Economy is getting hotter, is a Productivity Boom Next?” suggests that productivity depends just as much on demand as supply. The chart in the linked NY Times article from a McKinsey Global Institute (“Solving the Productivity Puzzle”) […]
Kung Hei Fat Choy – It’s the Chinese New Year of the Dog!
Today marks the Chinese New Year of the Dog! China is still an emerging market esp. when it comes to investing. Emerging or not, it has an increasingly powerful influence on market behavior. Some of these trends have not been yet adopted into professional models and so like last week, we get caught off […]
Bubbles Bursting? More Like Market Flaws Exposed!
Wow – what a week last week! Many saw it coming and many actually welcome it. Much of it comes from flawed trading positions in a flawed market. It is a good reminder of the 1987 crash when markets rallied on portfolio insurance schemes where rising stocks would trigger larger positions in index futures which […]
Artificial Intelligence is only as good as the data input and those who program it…
Here are two articles discussing the scope of artificial intelligence (AI)and its dependence not only on data input, but the prowess of those who write the underlying code and their interpretation of what the machine or algorithm is suppose to achieve. Most people assume Silicon Valley and recently I have heard programmers in China are […]
Bubble Indicators part 3- Animal Spirits Make a Comeback/Chinese New Year
It seems to make sense when stock markets continuously make record highs, that it will have to end soon…oder? This headline says it all… Source: @markets; Read full article Bloomberg / WSJ THe Daily Shot (16Jan2018) Maybe we finally are experiencing a new release of “Animal Spirits”! When did you last hear that expression–must be […]
The Early Wrap-Up for the 2017 Imagine the Unimaginables
Food for Thought… “Imagine the Unimaginables” is an annual attempt to identify what the capital markets are expecting in the months to come and therefore have efficiently discounted. It is an act of trying to identify consensus and then think of trends that may defy that consensus and is not yet priced in. Keep in […]