Blog: Is Equity Risk Declining? Or is it just wishful thinking? The falling VIX may be a sign that “fear” is declining. But risk has multiple dimensions and its other facets don't agree.
Newsletter: Liquidity and the MOVE Index - An Early Warning Signal of Financial Crisis Liquidity has been in the media a lot lately. It’s one of those things we take for granted, until it’s dried up. In Fractal Market Analysis (1994) I made the point that markets don’t exist to give you a fair price (an assumption of the Efficient Market
Newsletter: From Fragile to Turbulent - But "Minsky Moment" risks have passed The shift in the Market Uncertainty State Indicator (MUSI) from Fragile to Turbulent requires commentary this month. First, what the change in market state means, and second, why it happened. Fragile vs. Turbulent A shock can break a Fragile market. A Turbulent market will bend chaotically, but not break. Both
Blog: Hard, Soft or Aborted Landing? Aeronautical terms have been popular form of market jargon for a long time. These days, of course, it’s what type of recession we’re going to have: a “hard” landing (which is a nice way of saying, a crash) or a “soft” landing, where we glide in without disturbing
Blog: Is the VIX Broken? Nope. Recently I’ve read some market commentators declare the VIX1 “broken" as a fear index because it’s not always down when the market is up and up when the market is down. I’ve heard this story several times over the years, but the only time the VIX
Newsletter: The Released Balloon Theory of Inflation A released balloon can be deflating but still go up and down in an unpredictable way before collapsing. Inflation is like that too. It can ease in the near term while going up in the long term before it reaches its final level. So be careful extrapolating recent trends.