ECONOMICS

Late yesterday, we warned our premium subscribers, and this morning, moments before the report, we warned everyone else…

… that retail sales would be a "jarring" miss, and that's precisely what happened: in fact, it was so bad the January plunge in retail sales was the worst sequential decline since March 2023 and the biggest annual decline since May 2020!

Yet while we were spot on – and those who subscribe hopefully traded on the data and made good $ – there was a distinct group that was very surprised by the result. We are of course talking about Wall Street's erudite research economists who were gloriously wrong about today's retail sales number as shown in the histogram below.

Then again, admitting it was dead wrong without offering some reason why is grounds for immediate (more…)

By Hideyuki Sano, Bloomberg markets live reporter and strategist

The conventional wisdom in the Japanese market that a cheaper yen benefits exporters and boosts share prices has been turned on its head.

In reality, the yen’s exchange rate is having less and less of a bearing on Japanese stocks. The correlation between the Topix index and the dollar/yen rate since July has been 0.23, a level statisticians would judge as pretty weak. The link between the yen and the Nikkei (more…)

Last night, ZeroHedge kicked off our third live debate to discuss the fate of the U.S. Dollar and whether it will continue to dominate global trade. Our esteemed economic experts vigorously debated the question: Will the Dollar remain the global reserve currency in 2030?

Intros

Making the negative case, Austrian economist Bob Murphy put forth a succinct case why  foreigners will continue to ditch the dollar. In simple terms, an abysmal fiscal situation and poor customer (more…)