I’m sitting in a coffee shop today and staring at London’s mostly deserted street. Yes, it is Friday and no one really goes to the office since Covid. However, even so, today is especially quiet as there are virtually no trains running and workers are therefore unable to commute to work. Nurses, rail workers, ambulance […]
Fed pushes back against “unwarranted” easing expectations
On December 14, 2022, the Fed hiked by another 50bps. More interestingly, markets are pricing a further tightening of market conditions. Expectations for the trajectory of Fed rates moves has shifted hawkishly since the December FOMC statement. It seems that markets have finally recalled to “not fight the Fed.” As some of you might remember, […]
Inflation slows down to 5.9% in France in December
French inflation unexpectedly slowed to 5.9% (for the last twelve months) in December 2022. Inflation stood at 5.6% in September and 6.2% for both October and November. The slowdown in the French inflation rate is mostly due to a decline in energy prices, and to a lesser extent, in services. The drop in energy prices […]
German CPI slows down to 9.6%
Following Spain’s report that inflation slowed down, Germany just announced something similar. German inflation slowed more than expected in December (EU Harmonized -1.2% MoM vs -0.8% exp). This would be the biggest MoM drop since January 2015. Bloomberg noted that the decline in the main rate masked an increase in food costs across Germany at […]
2023 is the real test year for European monetary policy.
ECB rate rises are about to get real. Says the ECB. The Governing Council of the ECB decided on December 15, 2022, to raise the three key ECB interest rates by 50 basis points and expect to raise such rates further based on a substantial upward revision of the inflation outlook. Following its decision, the […]
And the English Investor is back!
Let’s not pretend otherwise. The blog has been awfully quiet for over a year and a half. Way too quiet. It’s entirely my fault. I had to deal with some personal issues and I only had so much bandwidth at a time. First, I had to deal with the fallout of my personal life. Then, […]