America’s beleaguered millennials received a rare gift on Tuesday: A scrap of good news. Even with the aggregate student debt burden eclipsing the $1 trillion mark, and wages pressures across the US economy remaining relatively subdued, a new survey from Bankrate.com claims that Americans’ savings habits are improving for the first time in a decade, with the strongest gains recorded among the 18-26 demographic.
As global central bank exuberance suppresses equity volatility, emerging markets are catching up (or down).
Expected uncertainty in Emerging Market Equities has never been lower... (in fact EEM implied vol is now less than half its lifetime average of 29.7%)
However, as Bloomberg notes, the Federal Reserve’s hawkish posture last week sets the stage for an uptick in developing-nation volatility in the second half of the year, Bank of America Merrill Lynch strategists said.
Oh and there's one more thing...
Dear Friends:
This website exists because of you. You called me out of retirement. We made a deal that you would support the website. And you have. Voluntary monthly subscriptions now exceed in number the responses to my quarterly call for donations.
Part of this is due to growth in the signups for monthly donations. But part is due to decline in the response to my quarterly requests.
Doubleline Capital founder Jeff Gundlach warned that the flattening yield curve could become a concern for US economic growth when two and three-year notes yield about the same, and the price per barrel of WTI crude oil plunges into the $30s, he said during a phone call with a Reuters reporter.
The last time the spread between two- and three-year yields held below 10 basis points was around the time former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke announced the beginning of Operation Twist and then QE3 in late 2012.
Since we first highlighted the cash-crunch in Qatar over a week ago, the situation has got notably worse (as liquidity costs rise further, signalling Qatar's financial system is running out of dollars).
The good news for Qatar - the world's wealthiest nation on a GDP/capita basis - is that it has enough financial firepower to withstand a prolonged financial siege, and defend its currency and economy, Finance Minister Ali Shareef Al Emadi told CNBC in an interview broadcast last Monday.