against all odds

...Trump team prepares dramatic cuts: Overall, the blueprint being used by Trump’s team would reduce federal spending by $10.5 trillion over 10 years...


http://thehill.com/policy/finance/...rump-team-prepares-dramatic-cuts

...in social choice theory, Arrow's impossibility theorem, the general possibility theorem or Arrow's paradox is an impossibility theorem stating that when voters have three or more distinct alternatives (options), no ranked order voting system can convert the ranked preferences of individuals into a community-wide (complete and transitive) ranking while also meeting a pre-specified set of criteria: unrestricted domain, non-dictatorship, Pareto efficiency, and independence of irrelevant alternatives. The theorem is often cited in discussions of voting theory as it is further interpreted by the Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem.

The theorem is named after economist Kenneth Arrow, who demonstrated the theorem in his doctoral thesis and popularized it in his 1951 book Social Choice and Individual Values. The original paper was titled "A Difficulty in the Concept of Social Welfare".[1]

In short, the theorem states that no rank-order voting system can be designed that always satisfies these three "fairness" criteria:

If every voter prefers alternative X over alternative Y, then the group prefers X over Y.

If every voter's preference between X and Y remains unchanged, then the group's preference between X and Y will also remain unchanged (even if voters' preferences between other pairs like X and Z, Y and Z, or Z and W change).

There is no "dictator": no single voter possesses the power to always determine the group's preference...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow's_impossibility_theorem

Bis auf weiteres kein Entry für strategisch short in Sicht. Allerdings ist die Absturzhöhe seit Trump um roundabout 10 % geklettert.  

...Skinner’s observation here is particularly relevant to the debate on how best to stimulate a depressed economy–whether to use expansive fiscal policy or expansive monetary policy, a debate that I’m going to elaborate on in a subsequent piece.  Expansive fiscal policy is a motivating, reward-oriented stimulus–it motivates investors and corporations to invest in the real economy by directly creating demand and the opportunity for profit. Expansive monetary policy–to include the imposition of negative real and especially negative nominal interest rates–is a repressive, punishment-oriented, stimulus.  It tries to motivate investors and corporations to invest in the real economy by taking away their wealth if they don’t.

Do investors and corporations acquiesce to the punishment?  No, they try to find ways around it–recycling capital through buybacks and acquisitions, levering up safe assets, reaching for yield on the risk curve, and engaging in other economically-dubious behaviors designed to allow them to generate a return without requiring them to do what they don’t want to do–tie up new money in an environment that they don’t have confidence in...

http://www.philosophicaleconomics.com/2015/10/bfskinner/

...crucially, fundamental outlooks–for earnings, interest rates, credit, investment, employment, and whatever else is relevant to the asset class or security in question–move in trends.  An important example would be the business cycle.  The economy sees an expansionary period of rising investment, employment, output, profits, wages, optimism, and so on.  Imbalances inevitably accumulate in the process.  The imbalances unwind in the form of a recession, a temporary period of contraction in the variables that were previously expanding...

The fundamental outlooks of investors influence their assessment of the fundamental value that is present in markets, and also dictate their expectations of what will happen in markets going forward. These impacts, in turn, influence what investors choose to do in markets–whether they choose to buy or sell.  Buying and selling determine prices.  So we have the basic answer to our question.  Market prices trend because the fundamentals they track trend, or more precisely, because the fundamental outlooks that guide the buying and selling behaviors of their participants trend....

http://www.philosophicaleconomics.com/2015/10/trend/

noch nichts

auch nichts: ...Bullish sentiment rebounded to a six-month high, though the rise was only large enough to bring optimism back to its long-term historical average. Bullish sentiment, expectations that stock prices will rise over the next six months, jumped 5.4 percentage points to 38.5%. Optimism was last higher on January 11, 2017 (43.6%). The rise puts bullish sentiment even with its historical average of 38.5%. Neutral sentiment, expectations that stock prices will stay essentially unchanged over the next six months, fell 5.3 percentage points to 29.2%. Neutral sentiment was last lower on January 4, 2017 (28.6%). The historical average is 31.0%. Bearish sentiment, expectations that stock prices will fall over the next six months, is 32.3%—a decline of just 0.1 percentage points. Pessimism remains above its historical average of 30.5% for the fifth time in six weeks.

Though bullish sentiment had been below average over the five previous weeks, it was never unusually low. Rather, optimism had merely fluctuated within the lower half of its typical range before rebounding to back to its historical average this week. This week's rebound in optimism comes as both large- and small-cap stocks rose to new record highs. Not all individual investors are encouraged by the continued rally, however, with some worrying about valuations or a forthcoming pullback.

The potential impact that President Trump could have on the domestic and global economy continues to cause uncertainty or concern among some investors, though encouraging others. Also influencing investor sentiment are earnings, consumer sentiment and the magnitude and timing of future interest rate increases...

http://www.aaii.com/sentimentsurvey

Reaktion des Euro auf die Hellen Rede. Nimmt man die fallenden Umfragewerte der Populisten und die steigende Inflation im Euroraum hinzu, könnte man meinen, dass der Euro im Begriff ist aufzuwerten.

Das dürfte gegen die gefühlte Erwartung des größeren Teils der Marktteilnehmer stehen, dass der Euro schwach ist und gar bis zur Parität fällt. (Das Tief vom Jahresanfang wurde bisher trotz Unkenrufen nicht unterschritten)

So ein Szenario kann ich mir bei dem aktuellen Marktumfeld nicht vorstellen. Dazu bräuchte es entweder eine Rückkehr der Fed zu QE, eine Ausweitung des QE der EZB und/oder einen deflatorischer Schock.  

Allerdings liegt hier noch kein höheres Tief vor, also kein Aufwärtstrend. Von daher kann man die Situation noch entspannt beobachten, bevor ein Invest Sinn machen könnte.  

Davon darfst du ausgehen. Der Euro wertet (moderat) zum US $ auf, weil die postrecessive Kreditexpansion in der Eurozone Dank Brüning nun im Schweinsgalopp verläuft und den Abstand im Zxklus zu den US entsprechend verkürzt. In der Folge steigende Zinsen und Preise, auch Draghi dürfte in Kürze nachziehen. Implizites Risiko bleibt aber bis auf weiteres der - unwahrscheinlicher werdende - Durchmarsch der Rechten in Schlüsselstaaten wie F oder NL. Geschieht dies, werden die Karten nochmal neu gemischt, in der Qualität eines externen Schocks natürlich.

ps 6 x gut analysiert für dich heute bei den braunen Ökonomen. Auch eine Sentimentsindikation!

M3 Eurozone:

..to truly understand Minsky, we have to go back to the work of John Maynard Keynes and, in particular, his belief that economic instability is inescapable. According to Keynes, instability follows from one simple fact: the future is completely unpredictable – we never quite know what will happen...If we cannot predict the future, we cannot, for example, calculate the “true” value of a stock or a house. As a result, the market has no anchor – instead, asset prices will blow with the wind.

Facing an uncertain future, Keynes argued that it is very difficult to imagine that people will behave “rationally” in the way that most economists like to assume. If you don’t know what will happen, perhaps the best you can do is to look at what everyone else is doing and follow the crowd. We jump on bandwagons, fearful of missing out on something, overconfident one moment and then overcome by panic the next. These waves of optimism and pessimism then translate into severe fluctuations in investment activity, destabilising the economy...

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/books/...ity-press#survey-answer

Austerity measures don’t actually save money. But they do disempower workers:

...we are told that ending homelessness, providing universal early childcare, healthcare, or higher education are unrealistic policies that would require spending far beyond our means. In reality, though, the arguments made by the fiscal conservatives — saving money, efficiency, less government spending — don’t align with the policies they are trying to implement. Fiscal conservatism is a myth, because cutting government programs doesn’t actually reduce government spending...

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/03/...-services-austerity-save-money/

Money, as it exists in a modern monetary system, is a social construct :

... Inside money is created inside the private sector.  Inside money includes bank deposits that exist as a result of the loan creation process.  It is the dominant form of money in the modern economy and as the economy has become increasingly electronic it has taken on an increasingly prominent role in the modern economy.  Money is no longer a physical thing, a cash note or a gold bar.  Its most common form is now numbers in a computer system. But inside money is inherently unstable as the entities that issue this money are inherently unstable...

....Outside money is money created outside of the private sector.  This includes cash notes, coins and bank reserves.  Although cash is quickly becoming obsolete, it is still a prevalent form of money in many economies.  This cash form of money primarily serves for...

http://www.pragcap.com/understanding-inside-money-and-outside-money/

Die Story aus der Welt der alternativen Fakten ist schnell erzählt: Grenzen zu, Zölle rauf, Importe runter und fertig ist das Wirtschaftswunder. Noah Smith macht sich die Mühe, diesen Nonsense zu dekonstruieren:

..everyone who’s taken an economics class knows that gross domestic product, which represents the total value of the stuff a country produces, can be broken down into four parts:

GDP = Consumption + Investment + Government Spending + Net Exports

That last term, “net exports,” represents the difference between exports and imports. So the equation is actually:

GDP = Consumption + Investment + Government Spending + Exports - Imports

Because imports have a negative sign in this equation, lots of people think that if imports go up, GDP (and therefore growth) goes down. But that’s not right. The reason, which every econ student ought to learn, is that imports also add to consumption, investment or government spending....

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/...rro-makes-a-rookie-mistake

Die Differenz wird 'gespart', sprich in den Defiziten des Auslands angelegt

Was der eine spart, addiert sich bei einem anderen zur Kreditblase

Hohe Defizite im Aussenhandel korrelieren mit starken Wachstumsraten

Gesucht wird ja das Instrument für strategisch short. Es muss nicht unbedingt der Index sein: