Joomla! site syndication http://roosterresearch.com 2010-09-05T22:54:54+01:00 http://roosterresearch.com http://roosterresearch.com/images/M_images/joomla_rss.png text/html 2010-06-22T00:18:33+01:00 http://roosterresearch.com http://roosterresearch.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=37&Itemid=2 A random post regarding the Yuan, putting aside the hubub by talking heads about how this is going to do so much for our exports. Combine that drivel with Media coverage about how China is letting the media actually cover strikers protesting against the bad Japanese auto corporation and you get the picture of rising costs in the Middle Kingdom. Maybe, one day that happens when Schumpeter and Ricardo have retaken the stage set by our collective Jungian Mr. Market Audience and as currently monopolized by Mr. Malthus.Right now, our thoughts gather about the past two years and how since Spring 2009, during the great bottom , how the value opportunity of March 2009 morphed back into the risk trade by March 2010, even though Yuan USD had flatlined, turning into a George Romero zombie for the duration. Prior to that, since approximately June/July 2008, the printing press out of Beijing had been closed and the People's Currency had stopped climbing, under the orders of the Proletariat's First Citizens. (No more speculators being able to close out and buy back with cheaper and cheaper USD is a problem for carry-traders isn't it?) After that, traders on the fundamental side who were Bulls got a ride to abattoir and turned into lunch-meat. Petulant and spoiled traders and bankers and captains of Industry were sent straight to the Principal's office for good old fashioned Developed Market Quantitative Easing ( Please, Sir, may I have some more, I have whole staff to feed at my mansion, and at my Mistress', I mean Assistant's office down on South Beach... ). In the old days, if you were bad you were sent up to your room with no dinner, or reorganized and sold off the stronger hands, not given a twelve course year-end banquet feting a great bonus season courtesy of Taxpayers and printing presses. The First World took over for the Middle Kingdom in 2008/2009, with little effect, with unemployment still dismal and Sovereign and municipal debt levels ready to be serviced with some debasement, competitive devaluation, accompanied by begrudgingly accepted haircuts given by a new generation of Bond Vigilantes. (Just imagine the scene from the film, After Hours, Mohawk this guy! Indeed such deals will likely be done under cover of darkness and over weekends by Finance Ministers sometime after 2011/12.) And now, here we are, awaiting the arrival of the SS Q.E.2, but something's changed.China is indeed joining the growing chorus for raising rates, and fight that often feared onset of post-traumatic inflation syndrome, and protect its currency, but it's doing it differently. It's going to manage to let its Fiat (a best in breed for a bad species) go up in a different way. It is understandable, why kill the China Growth Story with higher rates? That's the last thing they need anyway, given how crazy some of that misallocation of credit has been. So many empty buildings, so little time (to stop the collapse). Hey, when you're tied at the hip to an increasing crap currency that was once the hotty you remembered in High School but has seen some wear and tear over the past few decades, you realize it's time to have the talk and break up. During the course of this breakup, we may see some other interesting things. Things we haven't seen in about two years. Rising raw material prices perhaps?This is China kicking the inflation ball back over to us. Ooops, did we do that? Sorry about that heh... This is not about G-20.This is not about how our elected officials courageously pushed China to do the right thing .Hey don't panic. Sure, prices are going up, for a variety of reasons, and now we can add this to the list but we shouldn't worry should we?But these things take time, don't they. Hey, after all, it's only been two years, and look how successful we've been at turning things around! I'm sure we have ample time to adjust and deal with these developments. You ever read the story about the Frog in the pot of water that was put on the slow boil? Sounds delicious doesn't it? text/html 2010-06-20T21:59:44+01:00 http://roosterresearch.com http://roosterresearch.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=36&Itemid=2 Stay Gold Ponyboy. That is part of my takeaway from SE Hinton's fine work about the promise and potential of youth (and by extension the future) and the tragedy of lost opportunities and the tension of breaking with social order (i.e. the Socs v. Greasers ). In this book, someone dies, who could have had long life filled with amazing things to come and someone survives, to chronicle the tragedy, the joys and the lessons learned. And we are all witness to some real tragedies and stories of what might have been lately, haven't we? Here we see something going on with the markets that is once in a lifetime (or so we think, given that 100 year storms seem to arrive with increasing regularity in-between election cycles, much to the dismay of investors, the man on the street, politicians and pollsters, but not for the adventurous sharks who know how to sell and the wise-owls who can trade and make alpha or really cheap best of breed beta. Right now we see Gold as one of those speculations that has come to status of last great investment refuge. The unwinding of the great credit woodstock lovefest of a generation, and that analogy is not used lightly given the demographic underpinnings of the economic tumult of the West , means that some are fleeing to hastily made, crude Arks of the metal, battening down hatches as the Credit crash coda plays out. Before it was a few voices that survived the once teeming masses of gold crazy traders and bugs that packed the conferences of yesteryear, and now it's the current crop of literal Golden-boy hedgefunders who lead the pack.When does this end? I imagine when and if a sovereign stops pegging to another fiat and back to some form of raw material reserves, or when someone makes the cover of Business Week for becoming the King of building custom-made vaults to cage up a self-important magnate's (expatriates from Dubai, Connecticut, Mayfair or Shanghai) yellow dogs . Is that impossible you say? Well, a lot of improbable things have happened in the past decade.We are sanguine and look forward with trepidation as we make the final agonizing march towards 2015 or so. We see a developed market (a/k/a the West but soon that will include a the emerging but maturing East ) bottom by then. Right now with the yellow dog at $1250 or so, and the S P 500 at close to that, perhaps when gold can buy 3 or 4 units of American equity, will we see the end. When your neighbor quotes or dreams about gold in his/her sleep, this march ends. Until then... text/html 2009-08-27T22:22:23+01:00 http://roosterresearch.com http://roosterresearch.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=35&Itemid=2 Right now, we have selling signals for coffee futures since August 20, 2009, and from our trend following bias, we suggest shorting the C Futures, 37,500 pounds of aribica beans per contract, available on ICE, the new home for the New York Board of Trade, or NYBOT, contract. text/html 2009-08-25T09:29:21+01:00 http://roosterresearch.com http://roosterresearch.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=34&Itemid=2 This is an updated version of Sugar article submitted earlier (all apologies). It's no secret that sugar has attracted a great deal of attention, just look at the headlines and feeds many of us subscribe to, and at the number of impressive articles on this site. Many on Main Street, USA have learned about how too much rain in Brazil, and not enough in India in recent weeks can spark a sugar rush, just as last year many of us learned about the role of Thailand and the Phillippines in the global rice market. Will we remember, however, how the rice trade ended last unfolded last Spring? text/html 2009-08-24T21:23:41+01:00 http://roosterresearch.com http://roosterresearch.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=32&Itemid=2 Announcing the arrival of publications for trading, and for weekly and regular consideration. We'll be issuing trading reports for subscription, with weekly and bi-weekly pieces for broader investment consideration, as well as free material when possible. The focus will be macro-economic, with an unabashed Larry Livingston approach to trading, but we'll still make room for a variety of ideas, when possible, of the dollar for a fifty cents type from time to time.