Five months ago, when we previewed the asset classes that we thought would benefit the most ahead of (and during) China's ongoing currency devaluation, and its accelerating capital controls, we laid out two things we are focused on: bitcoin and gold. This is what we said:
Following December's disappointing drop in Services PMI data, January's initial print of 53.7 (missing expectations of 54.0) is the weakest since December 2014. It appears the "manufacturing recession doesn't matter" meme was wrong after all. As Markit notes, the survey data paint an inauspicious start to the year for the US economy.
Confirming ISM Servcies drop to May 2014 levels, PMI's drop shows that it appears there is a link between an industrial recession and slowing services...
Ben Bernanke is no longer the Fed's chairman, but this article is even more relevant today then it was when I wrote it in August 2013.
Ben Bernanke: Buy One Suit, Get Three Free
By Vitaliy Katsenelson, CFA
Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
While the Case-Shiller home price index rose modestly MoM (+0.87%), it continues to disappoint expectations with the 7th consecutive miss in a row. Notably, unadjusted the monthly rise in prices was just 0.1%. Year-over-year gains of 5.8% for the top 20 cities is the fastest price appreciation since July 2014 - thanks once again to seasonal adjustments.
7th miss in a row for the non-seasonally-adjusted data...
And the "improvement" in the headline data is all seasonal-adjustments: