QUESTION: Hello Mr Armstrong, I see that you’re about to launch Socrates, which seems to be a lifetime achievement. Congratulations. I have a question : it seems that, for now, it will deal with economic trends and cycles. Do you plan to extend Socrates to geopolitical and domestic social and political affairs ? Even on […]

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong, it seems many people are starting to pretend they have artificial intelligence systems and neural nets. It seems that they are using these terms very loosely. Can you explain the real difference? Everyone I have spoken to says you are the father of AI in finance. Thank you for all you contribute […]

Asian equity market continued the rally overnight that the ECB had teed-up for them with all main indices returning around +1.75% on the day. Although Europe had the afternoon session yesterday to react to the ECB Q+A, the early momentum remained constructive regardless. Then the news that the Chinese (PBoC) had cut its one-year benchmark lending rate by 25bp to […]

While so many people claimed that Quantitative Easing (QE) would produce inflation since it was the creation of money, the truth is very far from this simplistic idea. The theory used by the central banks is seriously flawed and a throwback to ancient times before 1971. There used to be a difference between debt and […]

The IMF has come out and warned that Saudi Arabia may go bankrupt within the next five years if the government maintains its current spending habits. Some emails are asking if the IMF is now copying our projections for they have the same timing. Who knows. I would assume the economic numbers are the numbers, but they […]

The Nikkei gave back some of yesterday’s rally as afternoon trading stocks turned negative to close down 118 points (0.65%). Shanghai rallied into the close, eventually gaining 1.5%, which made back some of yesterday’s losses. Europe spent most of the morning in no-mans land waiting for direction from the ECB. They did not have long to […]

Some people have wrongly expected a crash in the long bonds. What has actually happened is that China and others have sold into the high, liquidating their long bonds, and moving short-term. This is why rates are negative on the short-end. The CRASH comes in the opposite direction this time. Why? Because the central banks […]

Although the trade numbers from Japan were below forecasters’ projections, the street was abuzz with speculation of further BOJ intervention; so we saw the Nikkei close up 2% today. The same could not be said for Shanghai (closed down 3.5%) whilst the HSI was closed for a public holiday. European indices really could not decide on direction but after a […]

After a strong open the Nikkei spent the rest of the day clambering to remain in positive territory. Eventually closing +0.45% higher, the Nikkei inspired the Chinese (Shanghai) into a 38 point end of day rally to finish up at +1.1%. The HSI never managed to trade above Mondays close; it finished off the lows but still […]

Protests are rising in Germany over the entire immigrant/refugee issue. This is the backdrop to the rumors running around behind closed doors in Berlin. Political rule #1 for an economic crisis: closing the borders for immigration in a downward economic trend leads to violence.