By Tim Seymour

The price of gold began its parabolic ascent in the

By Tim Seymour

Mexico's (EWW) Q1 GDP expanded 0.8% compared to the first quarter of last year. "Southern Texas" is growing much slower than its neighbor to the north. A lot of the infrastructure and industrial growth has really fallen off. Services remain strong, but questions remain whether or not the Mexican economy becomes a victim of its own success.

In

By Tim Seymour

The U.S. dollar is quietly surging higher, and this morning kissed the closing level of July 24 last year, which marked multi-year highs. The dollar (UUP) (UDN) level of greater than 84 on the DXY takes you back to July 2010. What's different about this move is that this is a dollar move due to built-in fundamentals, not a flight to

By Tim Seymour

Recall walking through the ubiquitous chain drug store near you to see the cologne shelves where the knock-off brands advertised “If you like Paco Rabanne, you’ll love ‘Paul Raven’ cologne.” Basically, it smells the same, but is a lot cheaper.

Sorry, but this is my metaphor of the day used in the context of Turkey (TUR) and India (EPI). Turkey has been a darling for local and global investors alike due to its robust domestic economy heavily reliant on the consumer.

Turkey has also passed into an age where global problems present a sweet spot for investment. Slower global growth is not an issue for Turkey as they have a diverse export market and a domestic consumption story that is booming.

Turkey has always been plagued by two primary issues:

1) They have always run a large current account deficit as they were largely unable to fund

By Tim Seymour

Petrobras (PBR) issuing $11 billion in debt set a record for an emerging markets debt offering. The company is using the opportunity of negative real rates in Brazil (officially no, but in terms of true cost of living, YES), and most of the world to tap a global debt market starving for yield.

Petrobras is issuing at +260 to UST 10-year but at a major discount to other oil/gas issuers in Latin America as they bear the brunt

By Tim Seymour

It's hard to feel good about the level of movement we have seen in Japan relative to itself. Sure, we've only seen a 25-basis-point move in the Japanese 10-year JGBs (Japanese government bonds), but this is from 0.60% yield to 0.85% yield and

By Tim Seymour

The Aussie dollar (FXA) slide continues, pushing through 1.00. It is looking to test June 2012 lows around .9612. Commodity weakness, along with the Royal

By Tim Seymour

Emerging market (EEM) equities have vastly underperformed global equities, which are getting their growth largely form emerging markets. What gives?

Part of the answer lies in what is a long-standing precept that commodities have to be rallying for emerging market equities to do well, and that emerging market equities are dominated by state-controlled companies where corporate governance is awful. In the last 18 months, commodities have struggled and state-controlled emerging market companies have dominated the headlines for their ineptitude. Thus, emerging markets have badly lagged domestic markets (see chart below), as U.S. and European multinationals have gone to all-time highs.

Because we are in the month of May, markets are overly consumed with "risk on" and "risk off." Investment allocation is difficult in a world where commodity prices seem to be signaling one thing, but measures of risk say another. Copper prices are challenging multi-year lows, while

By Tim Seymour

With regard to a topic that could be discussed at great length beyond this forum, I would at least like to scratch the surface of a concept I think many investors (including me) are having trouble with. I am having trouble dealing with the concept of investment allocation in a world where commodity prices seem to be signaling one thing, but measures of risk say another.

Is global growth collapsing or is the world healing slowly, with strong pockets of real growth in key parts of the global economy? Is the move to all-time highs in global equity markets just a reallocation into more efficient growth, away from oversupplied commodity markets? I have not adapted my investment views to a world where lower commodity prices do not equate to pending disaster or growth implosion. I often write about deflationary forces of the asset bubble popping and the

By Tim Seymour

Emerging markets vs. domestic markets could be "game on" if the chart can recover in a big way. That could happen if we respond to the Federal

By Tim Seymour

Opportunity or trap? The news of Alibaba buying 18% of Sina (SINA), which has a core foothold in the micro-blogging space, has not only Sina but others in the Chinese Internet sector booming. The combination of blending the Sina and Weibo platform with the ability of Alibaba in e-commerce -- along with electronic payments -- presents an interesting opportunity for this China heavyweight.

In this article I provide a quick look at some of the core names in the space, along with some of my thoughts. The move today brings a breakout in the China Internet indices overall, after months of range-bound charts after the lows of December. The Chinese internet sector was under the cloud of an SEC investigation into the lack of transparency in accounting practices. The sector multiples have come down dramatically in some cases as leaders are challenged by the changing landscape

By Tim Seymour

Despite the small recovery in emerging markets in the last week, flows are trading hard -- especially the whimsical ETF flows. ETFs (aka the marginal buyer) have averaged -$1.1 billion on average the last four weeks. It's interesting that the crowded trades continue to stay crowded, such as Philippines (EPHE), Indonesia (EIDO), and even South Africa (EZA), which is a surprise and a little scary considering how hard they have traded gold miners and the retail sector.

Outflows for all regional funds: Total GEM (global emerging market) funds saw strong outflows of just over $2.0 billion last week, compared to outflows of $1.0 billion in the prior week. All regions recorded net outflows last week. On a four-week moving average basis, we have seen outflows of $0.3 billion each from dedicated GEM, EMEA, and Asia ex-Japan, as well as inflows of approximately $20 million into Latin

By Tim Seymour

Caterpillar (CAT) is seeing cuts going into a typically busy time of year, and is not expected to recover much. It's sad, but this is another solid company with nothing it can do other than buy back more stock. CEO Douglas Oberhelman is more impressed with his cost cutting than anything.

The company's sales and revenues outlook was cut from $60-$68 billion to $57-$61 billion for FY 2013. It's hard to get excited about these developments, especially with the profit outlook cut back to the bottom of the range ($7). However, the company is pleased with the U.S. housing sector. As well, sales in China were higher in Q1 2013 than 2012, and machine inventories are getting back to normal from previously bloated levels.

The scary news continues for the mining sector; it remains to be seen whether this is entirely priced into miners at this point.

By Tim Seymour

Aussie (FXA) overvalued, Brazil (EWZ) won’t let the real rise, Goldman Sachs Asset Management Chairman Jim O’Neill says.

The Central Bank of Brazil increased its interest rate

By Tim Seymour

We remember Treasury Secretary Paulson’s reference to having a bazooka in his pocket ,but really it’s the Bank of Japan who is packing the heat and planning on using it.

Whether it can reap the desired result or backfire is unclear, but the amount of quantitative easing (QE) is staggering.

Japan, with an economy that is 1/3rd the size of the U.S., is buying approximately $70 billion in bonds a month, vs. the Fed, which is buying “only” $85 billion. The Bank of Japan is expected to raise its forecast for consumer price growth and get to its 2% inflation target sooner than expected (Spring 2015), according to folks who are forecasting their policy statement next week.

Recently, the Bank of Japan revised its outline of outright

By Sean Geary

Data over the weekend from China showed a drop in economic growth, down to 7.7% year over year for Q1 2013. However, in spite of the exchange's recent woes, the Shanghai Composite (FXI) is showing remarkable resilience.

Although many market observers expected growth to come in higher than the numbers that were reported, from a long-term perspective, these numbers aren't entirely surprising -- consistent double-digit growth was never going to be viable over the long term. This dip in GDP growth is indicative of the country -- hopefully successfully -- transitioning from a low-cost export manufacturer to an economy more reliant on services.

While these GDP numbers are not necessarily an ominous portent for the future of China -- 7%-plus growth is head and shoulders above developed world growth, and inland China still has a lot of catching up to do, development-wise. A slowdown in

By Tim Seymour

Question: How can commodity currencies withstand the deflation that

By Tim Seymour

Gold (IAU) is catching a bounce off

By Tim Seymour

Gold rolls over – talk about a key level – $1,532 breached and then we went straight to 1,500. Gold had bounced a handful of times at $1,530-$1,538 since the downtrend began in 2011, but

By Tim Seymour

Russia (RSX) is back to November lows on the Micex, and if you ask brokers, it's more like slow death than anything.

Yes, price action has been poor, but more importantly trading volume has dried up. The breadth of the market has become quite narrow. Outside of Magnit, Sberbank, MTS, EDCL, Lukoil, and occasional trading (mostly down) in Gazprom (OGZPY.PK), this is a market that most non-dedicated funds (basically emerging markets, but not those that are Russia country funds) have only partial focus.

Russian fund outflows through the week of April 10 were -$393 million, according to EPFR. This is the worst showing since September 2011, which you may remember was a bloodbath in emerging markets.

Russian macro is also under pressure with GDP downgrades coming from the government, as