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Author: Alexander Gloy

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  • Gold: Religion or Salvation?

    Alexander Gloy

    What can you do if your investment thesis is not working? Look at the arguments of the opposing camp, see if they are convincing or if your train of thought is holding up. Whom should we hear for the case against gold? You can’t take so-called “research” from investment banks. They are (best case) clueless, as…

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  • Gold Crash July 20

    Alexander Gloy

    In early Asian trade (9:29am Australian time) Gold futures suddenly tanked 5% within seconds. There was no news, no movement in the EUR/USD or other currency pairs. Silver followed, as usual: The selling was so sudden and so violent trading was halted twice (see above). Who would sell thousands of gold futures at once into…

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  • US June Retail Sales

    Alexander Gloy

    US June retail sales (-0.3% m/m) came in below expectations (+0.3%). Excluding car and gasoline sales, sales declined 0.2% (consensus +0.6%). On top of that, May sales were revised downwards by $1.7bn: Retail sales growth has slowed down into a range normally associated with recessions (see chart below). However, low inflation is partially to blame…

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  • June NFP

    Alexander Gloy

    US June non-farm payrolls (+223,000) came in roughly in line with expectations (+230,000). However, revisions over the past five months add up to -154,000. Each of the past five months has been revised downwards (something last seen during the 2008/09 financial crisis). No reason to sound the alarm, but definitely worth watching. Year-over-year, employment growth…

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  • Tsipras announces referendum on bailout

    Alexander Gloy

    From FT’s Peter Spiegel: “Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, has announced a national referendum on whether his country should agree to creditors’ demands that would release desperately-needed bailout aid to avoid national bankruptcy. In a televised address to the nation after a late-night meeting of his cabinet, Mr Tsipras announced that the plebiscite would…

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  • Bank Jog

    Alexander Gloy

    The Wall Street Journal called recent deposit outflows from Greek banks a “bank jog” (as opposed to “bank run”). A bank run usually leads to affected banks running out of cash quickly (within days or hours). The Greek banking system has been bleeding deposits since years. But the movement has been accelerating last week: If…

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  • Count-down to Grexit?

    Alexander Gloy

    The ECB has painted itself into a corner. The table below is quite good. In the left column you see that customers have withdrawn around EUR 40bn from Greek banks since October 2014 (almost a quarter of all deposits). Capital flight is in full bloom. The ECB is keeping the Greek banking system alive by…

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  • Someone would like to see Greece burn

    Alexander Gloy

    After the close of European equity markets the Sueddeutsche Zeitung ran the following story: Without naming sources, the newspaper claims Euro-Group had decided on an emergency plan for Greece, which would include capital controls. Which is nonsense, since only Greece can decide on capital controls. Greece, of course, denied having such plans: By refusing to…

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  • EU-Greek talks end without deal

    Alexander Gloy

    After the IMF left negotiations with Greece, the EU also declared Sunday’s talks to have failed after a brief 45-minute meeting According to the EU Commission, a gap on fiscal measures was around EUR 2bn (1.1% of GDP) annually remains. That’s not huge, and probably not worth leaving the Euro-zone for, but who knows if…

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  • May US Retail Sales

    Alexander Gloy

    May US retail sales came in a bit better than expected (core +1.0% versus +0.7% expected). That is a change from a series of earlier disappointments. Furthermore, April numbers were revised upwards:   However, growth remains low. Since retail sales are a nominal value, low inflation (as currently) is holding back growth. Real retail sales…

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