Recent Portfolio Updates

European Stocks European stocks and US stocks typically move with a fairly high correlation but they’ve diverged quite a bit over the past 3 years as both the euro currency and British pound have depreciated significantly against the US dollar.  I’m thinking we’ll likely see this gap close over the next year so I started…

Why the Volatility is only just Beginning

Tomorrow morning the European Central Bank (ECB) will make an announcement on monetary policy and will most likely announce the beginning of their own Quantitative Easing.  I was a bit skeptical of this until last week when the European Court of Justice made it now legal for the ECB to engage in Quantitative Easing and…

Welcome to a World of Deflation

Here’s a chart to illustrate what happens during deflationary economic pressures, as we’re seeing right now (click to see a larger image): In order from top to bottom: Long-term Treasury Bonds (orange), US dollar (black), Emerging Markets (brown), Euro (Green), Yen (blue), Energy/oil (purple) – last 9 months Too much debt, not enough demand (poor…

Why There is Trouble Ahead for the European Economy

There was an interesting chart in The Economist displaying GDP growth since 1999, the start of the Eurozone, for Western economies.   From a quick glance at the chart, it appears that Germany is the impressive winner, generating over 20% change in GDP per person.  Spain, Greece, Portugal and Italy don’t look so good… But…