As we kick off the new year, there is perhaps no more tragic economic story than that of Brazil.
Once an EM darling, Latin America’s largest economy fell off the deep end in 2015 as a perfect storm of falling commodity prices, depressed demand from China, a soaring dollar, a devalued yuan, and an intractable political crisis plunged the country into what even the sellside has begun to acknowledge is an outright depression.
Just two weeks ago we warned of the looming "hyperinflation monster" in Africa with the continent appearing to be running out of dollars as some of Africa’s largest economies, including Nigeria, Angola, Ethiopia and Mozambique, are restricting access to the greenback to protect dwindling reserves. Specifically we warned of Angola's already-soaring inflation hampering its ability to 'adjust' its currency towards its black market 'reality'.
Even as increasingly more parts of the economy, especially those with exposure to manufacturing and industrial production, sink into the recessionary quicksand, one sector that was seen as immune from the malaise gripping US manufacturing and was outperforming the overall growth rate of the US economy, was housing, and specifically spending on private and public construction: a direct input into the GDP model.
Each year for the past three decades Blackstone's Vice Chairman of Multi-Asset Investing Byron R. Wien presents his top 10 "surprises" for the upcoming 12 months.
What constitutes a "surprise", you ask? A surprise is "an event that the average investor would only assign a one out of three chance of taking place but which Byron believes is 'probable,' having a better than 50% likelihood of happening." Last year's list included a few predictions that didn't exactly pan out including:
Via FactSet's Director of ETFs, Dave Nadig,
This week, the SEC gave us a belated Christmas present. But what does it actually portend?
The present in question is an 88-page "Research Note" from the SEC's Division of Trading and Markets titled "Equity Market Volatility on August 24, 2015." It's an innocuous-enough title, but for us market-structure wonks, it's kind of a big deal.