All Posts Tagged With: "assets"

There are no more risk-free liquid assets in the market. Maybe there never were. But it’s one of those sacred cows that has never been gored before. It is now (gored, in painfully slow fashion). The dirty little secret of the bankrupt Welfare State is out: government bonds are just another liability.

The Aussie market is still tightly correlated to the US market. This, we suspect, is because global asset prices are keyed off of the global supply of credit. If we’re in a credit depression, US stocks will stagnate. Aussie stocks will track that stagnation.

Now, there is a very good reason investors are reducing their allocation to stocks. As we’ve said before, we think the equity premium – what people are willing to pay for stocks – is regressing to the mean. It was so high for so long because corporate cash flows in the second half of the last century benefitted so much from low interest rates and globalisation.

Then, to add that essential touch of surreal whimsy that seems to permeate all things fiscal and monetary these days, I additionally note that not only did Total Reserves go down in the banks by $48 billion to $848 billion, but I will note that Total Reserves one year ago were a miniscule $41 billion! Hahahaha!

Just when you thought it was all baked into the cake…whammo! Another pie to the face. Get ready for more pies. In fact, you could take your pick of pies this morning. The most painful pie was yesterday’s 4.3% decline on the All Ords. It was the worst day of the year for Australian stocks. Unemployment called in at 4.5% and said it would be ticking higher this year too. Given last night’s news stream from East and West, it does not look like a happy Friday…