Alhambra Investment Partners, LLC

As if a mirror of the Federal Reserve, what is more important from the Bank of Japan flop Friday is what it did do rather than what it did not. Everyone was looking for at the very least an even...

As usual, everyone is focused on the wrong part of the FOMC statement. There is already a lot being made about the one sentence inserted as “hawkish” sentiment that puts the economy,...

Domestic oil inventory rose in the latest week, updates from the US EIA show. That build broke a streak of nine consecutive weekly draws dating back to mid-May. It is not unusual for oil inventory to...

Economic Reports Scorecard: The economic data the last two weeks was deja vu all over again. The US economy has been growing at roughly 2% the last three years and I see no reason – yet –...

Crude Oil prices fell again yesterday and it seems that gasoline is now on everyone’s mind. As noted last week, I don’t think that is the reason for the price action except in that it...

While there is a direct relationship between the steepness of contango in the oil futures curve and the amount of crude siphoned from the market to storage, it is not an immediate one. When crude...

A few days ago I examined the relationship between the stock market PE and CPI inflation. The reason was the sudden renewed emphasis on low inflation in the context of trying to justify increasingly...

With no clear direction from any of the Asian influences, it isn’t surprising to see more listlessness in everything from stocks to bonds. The Dow was up, the NASDAQ down, and the S&P 500...

The most troubling aspect of the payroll reports month after month through the “best jobs market in decades” was how the counted labor force seemed so entirely apathetic to it. If jobs...

Everyone knows about lies, damned lies, and statistics. The quote has been attached to Mark Twain who apparently attributed it to British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. It remains among popular...

The Chinese yuan fell again in Monday Asian trading, breaking below 6.70 for the first time. Not surprisingly, the tone to broad early trading in Europe and the US was slightly negative on what would...

Retail sales in June 2016 were up 3.14% from June 2015. That rate is slightly better than the average from the middle of last year, but not significantly so. The 6-month average continues to straddle...

Last week, the American Bankruptcy Institute (ABI) released its updated statistics for commercial bankruptcies through June 2016. For yet another month, bankruptcies jumped by 30% over the same month...

We have to acknowledge that economic statistics are imperfect even under the best conditions. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to measure comparative circumstances where conditions...

Wholesale inventories have ground to a halt, but since wholesale sales have also, the inventory imbalance only continues midway already through its second year. Excluding petroleum, the wholesale...

So much of the basis for monetary policy was put in place in the 1960’s study of the 1930’s. It has become commonplace simply to assume 21st century tactics as being directly lifted from...