I am indeed biased towards gold and inflation for obvious reasons but I do agree on the critics by some who claim the substance of those predicting high inflation and high gold prices can be seriously flawed and missinforming at times. That's why I remembered the Shadowstats report as one of the more comprehensive reports I have come across, trying to dig deeper then the - 'they will keep printing money till we run out of trees' mantra hence why I posted it here for it to be dissected and thanks again for that.
Speaking of the Fed Loan Survey, its out http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/SnLoanSurvey/200911/charts.pdf http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/SnLoanSurvey/200911/table1.htm http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/SnLoanSurvey/200911/table2.htm Pretty much all categories of loans had standards tightened further, that's decreased lending on top of previous decreased lending. The last credit crunch had a 1-2 year leg between net loosening of standards till the first hike(which was made sooner than normal due a Greenspan 'experiment'), this time around the net loosening might only come in 2010 Q1 maybe only on Q2, with standards even tighter than the 90-91 crunch, suggesting a longer lag. I'm very long the front end here and I see no reason to take profits
UST report of banks bailed out by TARP http://www.financialstability.gov/impact/monthlyLendingandIntermediationSnapshot.htm Same thing, little lending, bank balance sheets contracting
As a back-of-the-envelope, I'd guess JWH ran about twice as hot (in terms of annualized vol) as the current generation of multi-$b trendfollowers, so you might want to include a factor of two in there somewhere.
See your point and what bothers me is this: US & other govt see that stimulus money ends up paying back loans and not enough spending. People saw glimpse of bad times and are now scared having a loan and want off the hook. All predictable. Stimulus unexpectedly continues to achieve objective. It will have to run quite long time until enough people 'repaired' their balance sheets to be ready to spend again and ready to take on debt => inflation will have to pop out later on => markets going up in anticipation ?
I'm currently reading the book Practical Speculation by VN and Laurel Kennel. Its good, just finished the 1st and 2nd chapters. The 2nd one is interesting because it claims PE ratios have little or no predictive power for stock returns(indices), I thought that was the case after looking at John Mauldin's research. Instead of getting angry at VN and saying stuff 'well he blew up' because he is shaking some of my beliefs(like 99% of ET or the world would do) I rather step back and think about his data and see why is that so, but I dont have a strong conclusion at this point, I feel like I need to re-read the chapter It also mentions a certain negative correlation between earnings and stock returns(large cap indexes, not on individual stocks). This could be due the fact the market tries to antecipate earnings and expectations are more important than the actual earnings
I read both of VN's books, Practical and Education. He's an incredibly smart and astute guy and I agree with many of his findings and opinions, many are hard to argue with. Just not all of them. The criticism that VN blew up comes from a very simple fact: He predicted that all major trend following funds will blow up and disappear. It is quite ironic that's all.
Nice to see this thread at least make an attempt to get back on track ... I would note the continued fascinating price action as equities melt up to the tune of around 5% over the past few sessions, yet GS futures and treasuries continue to move up as well. There's something happenin' here ... I too have read both of Vic's books. Ed of Spec is a must-read classic for pretty much anybody. The other book, not so much. I have noticed that the posts on Vic's website have taken a different turn since late 2007. Prior to the meltdown, Vic and his minions saw nothing but positives from the housing/consumption/building/big box store/strip mall/credit booms. They spent the majority of their time bashing any who would point out the bubbles being formed. Vic himself spent most of 07 pounding the table that the subprime mess was so widely known that it had long ago been discounted in stock prices. He also very publicly was a buyer of Google at the very top. Vic's posts have now moved far away from economic and stock forecasting. Its become a better site.