I could never live in Scandinavia.  The long winters would drive me stark-raving mad.  And for a guy who has driven all the way to Mexico because he needed a good street taco, the blandness of the food would prevent me from ever being happy in Europe’s great white north. Yet it seems that the...Read More

Global equity markets finished 2012 with a bang, and the S&P 500 ending the year up 13.4%.  But what you might have forgotten is that virtually all of those gains came in the first quarter.  The S&P 500 rose 12.0% in the first three months of last year and only managed to squeak out another...Read More

All subcultures have their rites of passage.  Marine recruits have basic training.  Fraternity boys have hazing.   And macro traders have the Japan short. It seems that you’re not part of the club until you’ve lost money shorting Japan bonds or, more recently, the yen. You’ll do it for all the right reasons, of course.   We...Read More

The past two years have been volatile for investors in virtually every market, but they have been particularly unkind to investors in China.  Chinese stocks, as measured by the iShares FTSE China 25 Index ETF (NYSE:$FXI) spent most of 2011 and 2012 in a downtrend, though in the past two months they have shown signs...Read More

In recent weeks, I’ve urged readers to maintain positions in some of the potentially most volatile markets in the world, including emerging markets (see “Bullish on India” and “Access to Africa”) and crisis-wracked countries such as Spain (see “ECB Could Trigger Monster Rally in Spanish Stocks”). My rationale was simple enough.  In a market being...Read More