Real Vision: Finance & Investing

Born into a family of cotton traders, Alexander Stahel is a natural when it comes to commodities. Alexander grew up in Switzerland before he migrated to the U.K. to begin an investment banking career. Now the chief investment officer at Burggraben Holding, the Zug, Switzerland-based firm he founded, he’s focused on finding great value in a few public and private companies. In this episode of My Li...

Stocks surged into the weekend, with all three major U.S. equity indexes up more than 2% two hours ahead of Friday’s close. “The market isn't rallying on hopes of a pivot,” tweeted Michael Gayed. “It's rallying on bond-market stabilization.” Michael, the publisher of The Lead-Lag Report, joins Andreas Steno Larsen for today’s Daily Briefing to elaborate on his contrarian “melt-up” thesis and to ta...

The European Central Bank announced a second 75-basis-point interest-rate increase in as many months on Thursday, meeting economists’ expectations with inflation riding at a record-high 9.9%. The euro weakened against the dollar, even as Treasury yields softened, as investor concern about future growth seems to be intensifying. Meanwhile, the U.S. economy expanded at an annualized pace of 2.6% dur...

More central banks are signaling turns away from tightening as concerns about growth have begun to overwhelm fears of inflation, with the Bank of Canada cutting its policy rate by a smaller-than-expected 50 basis points today. It’s notable that the Canadian dollar rallied against the U.S. dollar. On the fiscal front, Japan has prepared a 67.1 trillion yen stimulus package. Oh, and Google’s and Mic...

“Markets are rallying right now based on a massive overshoot in technicals and sentiment,” explained Mark Ritchie II in a note today. “The bears overplayed their hand, and the bulls are trying to push back.” Ritchie II, a managing partner at RTM Capital, joins Maggie Lake for today’s Daily Briefing to talk about the factors driving this equity rally, whether it’s durable, what the Federal Reserve...

President Xi Jinping strengthened his hold on power and took definitive steps to reverse a half-century of open relations with the West at last weekend’s National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, triggering a steep sell-off of U.S.-listed Chinese stocks. The major equity indexes were all well in the green through midday – “Powder dry kind of day… yields up, VIX up, dollar steady – action s...

In this episode of My Life in Four Trades, Jeff Dorman, a co-founder and the chief investment officer of Arca, gets personal with Maggie Lake. Jeff explains why he quit traditional finance, shares the lessons he had to learn and unlearn after years of working on Wall Street, and talks about how he’s become a calculated risk-taker. After trading at leading TradFi firms such as Lehman Brothers, Merr...

The market is all set for a 75-basis-point rate-hike in November, though San Francisco Federal Reserve President Mary Daly stoked an equity rally on Friday when she said the central bank should try to avoid an “unforced downturn” by over-tightening. The U.S. dollar softened against major currency pairs, including the Japanese yen in spectacular fashion, and Treasury yields also declined. Saudi Ara...

The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note surged to a fresh cycle high of 4.18% on Thursday, as stocks struggled to hold gains amid more hawkish talk from Federal Reserve officials about inflation. Across the pond, the British pound has returned to pre-mini-budget level, the gilt market has calmed, and Liz Truss has resigned as the shortest-serving Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in history...

The yield on the two-year U.S. Treasury note climbed to its highest level since 2007 on Wednesday, as investors priced in the probability that the Federal Reserve will maintain a hawkish policy stancy until there are meaningful signs of an easing in core inflation. The impact of higher interest rates is already being felt in key areas of the economy, such as the U.S. home mortgage market, where ap...

All three major U.S. equity indexes were up more than 1% through midday Tuesday, as energy stocks hit a 52-week high relative to crude oil futures. That’s a data point Maggie Lake is sure to raise with Tony Greer, the founder of TG Macro, during today’s Daily Briefing, with reports that President Joe Biden is considering further sales from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to offset critical supply...

“The U.S. Dollar Index is on the verge of actually looking weaker,” noted Dave Floyd around midday today. “Key levels are 112.50 and 112.21. A close below here and we’re looking at 109.64.” Is the prospect of a softer dollar sufficient to explain a near-4% rally for the Nasdaq Composite, a 3% gain for the S&P 500, and a 2% rally for the Dow Jones Industrial Average? Dave, the founder of Aspen Trad...

Warren Mosler, an American economist and entrepreneur, is perhaps the leading proponent of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). But what is MMT? And how can it help us understand what’s happening at a macro level right now? Mosler explains it all to Harry Melandri on another riveting episode of The Next Big Trade. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There’s nothing ordinary about Bill Browder’s life. After earning an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1989, he moved to Russia with the intention of becoming the “biggest capitalist in Eastern Europe.” Bill’s dream manifested with the opening of the Hermitage Fund, which became the best-performing hedge fund in the world. In this captivating episode of My Life in Four Trades, t...

The situation in the U.K. is going from bad to worse, with Prime Minister Liz Truss now in danger of losing her own job after firing her finance minister Kwasi Kwarteng and short-circuiting her own economic package mere weeks into her tenure. U.S. equities drifted lower Friday in the aftermath of Thursday’s historic reversal, as retail sales for September stagnated due to the effects of inflation....

Real Vision Co-Founder & CEO, Raoul Pal, answers the internets questions and covers everything from macro & crypto to wine, scuba diving, food and art! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Within three hours today, S&P 500 futures swung from a 3.9% decline to a 3.9% rally. “It's pretty incredible,” tweeted Jared Dillian shortly after noon, “to watch people get fooled by the market over and over again. It's not hard – when there's no one left to sell, they cover.” Weston Nakamura has a more global perspective on the reversal, noting that the U.K. and the pound as well as Japan and th...

The Producer Price Index for September came in hotter than expected, as investors brace for the Thursday morning release of Consumer Price Index data. Minutes to the most recent meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee reveal a central bank as determined as ever to “stay the course” toward “restrictive rates in the near term.” With cracks in the global financial system getting bigger by the da...

The Bank of England intervened in the U.K gilt market for the second time in two days Tuesday, with the following warning: "Dysfunction in this market, and the prospect of self-reinforcing 'fire sale' dynamics pose a material risk to UK financial stability." Real Vision Macro Analyst James Helliwell joins Maggie Lake at the top of today’s Daily Briefing to talk about the BofE’s latest move and wha...

Stocks opened to the downside but trended higher throughout the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average peaking into positive territory in the early afternoon, as investors prepare for Thursday morning’s release of Consumer Price Index data for September. The up-and-down action surely reflects confusion: Market internals and sentiment data are actually bullish, but policymakers are raising the degre...

In Jeff Booth’s eyes, money is just information, and we desire the feeling we get when we have more of it. It’s also why, according to Booth, that money is being manipulated by central banks at an unprecedented rate to avoid a collapse in the credit system. So, how do we make things better? There is no perfect solution. But Booth sees a clear favorite, capable of delivering inordinate societal val...

KPTL Arbitrage Management is one of the few crypto hedge funds that managed to profit from Terra’s crash. Its founding partner, Jay Janer, sheds insights on his journey from TradFi trading desks at Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley. He shares his approach to navigating the world of digital assets and explains why agility is a key characteristic of successful traders, regardless of asset class. Ne...

Nonfarm payroll growth slowed to 263,000 in September, in line with expectations, even as the U.S. unemployment rate ticked down to 3.5% from 3.7%. Combined with the relatively slow pace of firings, the Federal Reserve has all the data it needs to proceed with another 75-basis-point rate hike in November. But, as Peter Boockvar notes, the unemployment rate and initial jobless claims are lagging in...

Stocks drifted mostly lower Thursday, as investors look to Friday’s nonfarm payroll data for signs the U.S. labor market is finally beginning to break. New applications for unemployment benefits did tick up to 219,000 from a revised 190,000 the prior week. That’s not going to move a Federal Reserve that only gets more hawkish with each stock-market rally – and that seems hell-bent on driving up un...

The U.S. dollar bounced back on Wednesday, its showing of strength once again a bane to equity markets, as interest rates also ticked higher for the first time in a few days. OPEC+’s decision to cut daily production by 2 million barrels is today’s main story, driving up crude oil prices by more than 1% and making energy the only sector moving higher in the S&P 500 today. Riding an impressive tradi...