Business

For a while it seemed that the Vancouver housing bubble, the direct result of a relentless tidal wave of Chinese "hot money", had burst after last August the British Columbia province implemented a 15% property tax to stem the inflow of offshore funds. And indeed, in the immediate months that followed, Vancouver's housing priced tumbled from record highs.

However, it was not meant to be, and less than a year later, the Vancouver housing bubble is back, and it's (almost) bigger than ever.

Authored by Mark St.Cyr,

If you were one of the myriad analysts, next-in-rotation fund managers, tech commentators, et al paraded across the financial/business media over this past week – you had a good week. The narrative of “earnings beats” together with the so-called “relief rally” emanating via the French elections helped propel the argument.

However, if one (once again) peered passed the headlines of Non-GAAP reporting alchemy that would make Issac Newton envious one could clearly see that all was not “gold.”

Authored by Samuel Rines via AvalonAdvisors.com,

This note takes a brief look into "narrative economics" and the link to central banks.

In the wake of the financial crisis, central banks have stepped up their communications, whether in the form of speeches, press conferences, or the like.

While not a quantitative style of understanding economics, it may prove a useful tool to understanding broad shifts in the economy.

In early 2016, when Kim Jong Un was hitting the headlines almost daily with threats (and missile tests), the Korean stock market tumbled reflexively as 'risk' was priced into equity markets.

That is a very different picture to what is happening now.

(Note the correlation - lower pane - between "nuclear, Korea" stories and the price of the Korean stock market is now strongly positive (as opposed to the more rational negative 'norm')

While one can hardly accuse the market of being particularly nervous at this moment, with the VIX dropping to single digits earlier today for the first time in a decade, and with strategists and pundits explaining to anyone who will listen how this is the "most hated rally ever" despite the S&P trading at all time highs at valuations that are in the 99 historical percentile, an interesting admission was made today by Bank of America which reported that in April, its Sell Side Indicator, a proprietary measure of Wall Street’s bullishness on stocks, rose by 0.6ppt to 53.5, its hig