The “Gos market” blind spot in the inventory story
The local pub owner was telling my husband the other that he felt secure in the face of the inflation because he had pre-bought three months worth of beer supply. He could now relax for a bit because he knew what his costs would be for at least a quarter. After that, he was hoping […]
What’s up with Fed daylight overdrafts data?
I’m working on a bigger story to do with US dollar intraday liquidity, but until that’s done I wanted to quickly flag something specific to paid subscribers as a small preview. It’s the Daylight Overdrafts and Fees page of the Federal Reserve website: And specifically this bit: What’s important about that? Well, as the Wayback […]
The BoE’s great commodity curve forecast fiasco
Hot off the presses from the UK’s ONS on Wednesday: The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rose by 9.0% in the 12 months to April 2022, up from 7.0% in March. I hope team transitory is taking note. So what does this sorry state of affairs tell us about the Bank of England’s ability to forecast […]
Does the LNG glut change anything?
There’s an important story in the FT about the drop in UK gas prices resulting from massive LNG imports over the past couple of months. The authors note the additional volumes have come from the US, Qatar and Algeria. The story also carries this eyebrow raising chart: As a result of the above, the story […]
Running on diesel fumes and other commodity crunch stories
The diesel situation is dire. What policymakers seem to be missing is that it’s not just the market’s capacity to provide for today that is under stress. It’s also the market’s capacity to build inventories in the traditional inventory-building season. I am on the run a lot until Saturday (in Poland), but I thought I […]
Do politicised central banks have a right to independence?
One of the great questions of our time is whether central bank independence is really still a thing. Yes, of course, in principle it still is. But in recent post-QE, ESG, Covid stimulus and climate-agenda years, the lines between government policy and central bank policy are becoming ever more blurred. This becomes clear when you […]
Indian heatwave compounds Ukrainian grain shortage
Apologies for light content this week. I have been doing a lot of ‘old school’ news gathering (i.e. face-to-face). In that capacity I recently met with Elena Neroba, a Ukrainian agricultural commodity analyst, usually based in Kyiv, who gave me a fascinating overview of the state of the market. She arrived in London a few […]
PayPal’s interest rate sensitivity now has a ¥en angle
PayPal shares, which had suffered sharp declines this year, drew support after the payment processor disclosed in first quarter earnings that it would be cutting its medium-term outlook on a deteriorating macro environment. Most analysts had been anticipating a cut in forecasts. The company’s Q1 results, announced April 27, showed the payment processor posting revenues […]
Is Russia building an atomic priesthood?
The Blind Spot was one of the first online publications to highlight how an increasingly religious mindset, possibly inspired by a desire to manifest the myth of Moscow as The Third Rome, was possibly influencing Vladimir Putin’s bellicosity in Ukraine. Since then, the idea that Putin sees himself as engaged in a holy mission on […]
An ongoing inquiry into what’s going on with PayPal
The PayPal share price just keeps going down: And here’s the stock compared to the performance of the Nasdaq: The usual pundits are at a loss. They think the stock should stage a comeback soon. As Bloomberg’s Subrat Patnaik noted on Monday: “Wall Street sees the company’s shares jumping 90% over the next year, according […]