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Market Bipolarity: Exuberance versus Exhaustion!

Musings on Markets

We started the year with significant uncertainty about whether the surge in inflation seen in 2022 would persist as well as about whether the economy was headed into a recession. The Markets in the Third Quarter Coming off a year of rising rates in 2022, interest rates have continued to command center stage in 2023.

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Data Update 2 for 2022: US Stocks kept winning in 2021, but…

Musings on Markets

In a post at the start of 2021 , I argued that while stocks entered the year at elevated levels, especially on historic metrics (such as PE ratios), they were priced to deliver reasonable returns, relative to very low risk free rates (with the treasury bond rate at 0.93% at the start of 2021).

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Country Risk: A 2022 Mid-year Update!

Musings on Markets

It has been my practice for the last two decades to take a detailed look at how risk varies across countries, once at the start of the year and once mid-year. Country Risk: Default Risk and Ratings For investors, the most direct measures of country risk come from measures of their capacity to default on their borrowings.

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Data Update 3: Inflation and its Ripple Effects!

Musings on Markets

By the end of 2021, it was clear that this bout of inflation was not as transient a phenomenon as some had made it out to be, and the big question leading in 2022, for investors and markets, is how inflation will play out during the year, and beyond, and the consequences for stocks, bonds and currencies.

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Data Update 3 for 2023: Inflation and Interest Rates

Musings on Markets

If 2022 was an unsettling year for equities, as I noted in my second data post, it was an even more tumultuous year for the bond market. The rise in rates transmitted to corporate bond market rates, with a concurrent rise in default spreads exacerbating the damage to investors.

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Data Update 4 for 2024: Danger and Opportunity - Bringing Risk into the Equation!

Musings on Markets

In my last data updates for this year, I looked first at how equity markets rebounded in 2023 , driven by a stronger-than-expected economy and inflation coming down, and then at how interest rates mirrored this rebound. Analysts often try to bring company-specific components, i.e,

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Data Update 3 for 2024: Interest Rates in 2023 - A Rule-breaking Year!

Musings on Markets

As we start 2024, the interest rate prognosticators who misread the bond markets so badly in 2023 are back to making their 2024 forecasts, and they show no evidence of having learned any lessons from the last year. In fact, treasury bill rates consistently rise ahead of the Fed's actions over the two years.