Alhambra Investment Partners, LLC

The Ricardian theory of free trade has dominated economics philosophy for good reason. It has a sound basis in common sense and offers a theoretical guide to understand the nature of exchange from a...

Markit’s Services PMI fell to just 51.2 in May, dropping a rather large 1.6 points from 52.8 in April. That meant the combined US Composite PMI, which puts together both manufacturing and...

New home sales surged in April to 619k SAAR. That was the highest rate, by far, since January 2008 more than eight years ago. It was also the biggest monthly gain in twenty-four years, which either...

The short term leadership is shifting as the dollar comes off its lows. Energy and materials had been leading the market during the recent period of dollar weakness. As the dollar found its footing...

While Markit’s economic sentiment surveys had usually been perhaps a touch more optimistic about the state of the world than others or other data, May has been a rough month for that...

It is easy to make jokes about the BEA’s newfound respect for “residual seasonality” that in the words of CNBC’s chief economist makes each Q1 appear to be a “different...

So thoroughly destroyed is Japan’s economy that some of the numbers it produces are beyond comprehension, just staggering in any meaningful context. For example, Japan’s real GDP (SAAR)...

After a volatile but stagnant final two months of the year, in which the market straddled the moving averages with no clear direction, the S&P 500 Index (NYSE:IVV) broke down in early January,...

Despite the fact that the Fed has raised rates and therefore signaled via policy communication that their view of the economy is rather positive, both bond and stock prices don’t seem too caught...

Back in mid-April the chart of the week asked if commodities had made a bottom. The answer was maybe in that the short and intermediate term had turned positive but the long term monthly chart had yet...

After seeming so “dovish” last month in the bland, edited April policy statement, the FOMC meeting minutes reveal supposedly a different vibe. Today’s release has to this point given...

The US Treasury yield curve is flattening again, with parts finally in 2016 surpassing the bearishness exhibited to start 2015. The mainstream is just now starting to notice likely because unlike last...

What if the FOMC and the wider Federal Reserve apparatus had heeded Greenspan’s uncertainty? There is grave danger in wandering too far into counterfactuals, but there is some value, I think, in...

“Patience is the ability to idle your motor when you feel like stripping your gears.” After a swift decline in January, a flat February, a strong turnaround in March and a pretty flat...

It’s not just that there was an obvious and intense change in sentiment, as that is quite common among and within markets. It is more so that this repetition is a little too familiar. In...

Economic Reports Scorecard The tone of the economic reports improved over the last two weeks with quite a few releases coming in better than expected. From a scorecard viewpoint, we had 6 reports...