Posts by "slaiman7"

Speculator, and Cougar,

The ideas you present are really interesting. I would like to add another dimension to them by adding my perspective from business point of view.

I have great doubts about any green shoots and i have some doubt about having the worst behind us.
I lived in the US until DEC 08 where i owned retail business. Due to the recession/depression in the US, I left in Dec 08 to Venezuela. When i first arrived in Venezuela, it felt like anything but a recession going around the world. Business was excellent!!
However, it is only in the last couple of months that business owners started complaining about business getting slower. Business owners are now saying that June was the worst they've seen in long time, if ever. Major importers form china, located in Panama free zone and export to all latin america, are expecting things to get worse. Major exporting offices in China are painting a very bleak picture going forward.

I realize that many countries are indulging in QE, but each of those countries, except china, have a broken system that QE is barely keeping it together. As for the chinese stimulus, it would be a joke to assume that it could make up for the loss of US and European consumers that world has been, and still, dependent on. An exception for the US and European consumers, real estate bubbles throughout many countries have supported local consumers, but we all know what happened and still happening to those bubbles.

Furthermore, we are seeing the savings rate in the US going up really fast. I can see this happening all around the world even in countries with high savings rates such as emerging economies. People in emerging countries are not going to start spending more than they used to, while seeing all the problems happening in the developed countries. Talking to people from emerging economies I sense how worried they are. They assume that if countries such as US are facing such dire problems, then things are going to get worse for them. Even if that wasn't true, you can imagine how such a psychological factor could affect their spending habits.

Thus, even if we assume that the financial system has surpassed its worst phase, there is a lot of adjustment that needs to happen around the world, and as a result, the least I could say about the road ahead is that if things are not going to get worse, they are not going to get better any time soon.

Slaiman

Speculator, you made some interesting points during your debate with cougar about bull market you in the dollar in the coming two years. Question: do you see equities breaking below march lows? and what's is your outlook for the US economy going forward?

BTW, I suggest you change your nickname to Economist rather than speculator since you are actually an economist based on what you said. ;)

Thanks and keep up the good work,

Slaiman

Dear Ashraf,

In case the Fed meeting comes out with dollar negative news, and if at the same time we see continued drop in equities (which is dollar positive) how would you think the dollar would perform in the face of those two contradicting factors? in such a senario is better to stay away from dollar pairs and short commodities currencies agianst YEN?

Thanks

Mo, thank you very much.

Ashraf, you expect EURUSD to be around 1.36 by end of june. However, with the Fed meeting on june 24-25, don't expect them to announce additional QE which should be dollar negative and hence EURUSD much higher than 1.36? or do you not expect the fed to announce additional QE until the next meeting?

slaiman

Ashraf,

Do you see a major head and shoulder formation in EURUSD chart that could lead EUR down to 1.32?

Thanks