The Saturday Hark Back - 06 Jan 2024
Capturing the themes of the week when there’s more time to digest them.
A volatile week to start 2024. As the calendar changed, some of the excesses of the Santa rally have been naturally reset, even financial markets have to go on a January diet.
The first week of 2024 was the opposite of Dec 2023, an historically bad equity open - led by Apple's sell off.
How many cuts in 2024? US fixed income "repriced", unwinding some of the excessive expectations but it was hardly a volatile reset.
The end of QT "discussion" appears in the Fed minutes
Mixed signals from the US labour market - it's bending but not breaking
Yellen, Barkin and "soft landing" consensus
Red Sea tensions underpinning Oil prices
Bitcoin ETF - we hate TradFi boomers but we can't wait for their inflows...
USDJPY - BoJ expectations, quake fall out and equity investment regulatory changes