Nick Gogerty

Farmers' 'Wise' Corn Planting Decision: When Less is More

Corn depletes soil nutrients which is mitigated with fertilizer (anhydrous etc.) or crop rotation. Increased fertilizer prices, increased soybean prices and the choice of rotating crops all make sense to rotate the crop thus diminishing last year record acreage allocation. Hint the crop report is an early indication, rains in late April or May, significant Bean declines could change the actual behaviour from the declared intentions in the USDA report.
Having worked in the Iowa corn and bean fields growing up, traded commodity futures as a teen and now working with a fund in New York lets a fella see the whole cycle.

How Far Will House Prices Fall? Implications From the Latest WSJ Survey

affordability is what counts. look at average income growth. nickgogerty.typepad.co...

How Ivory Tower Economists Created the Housing Bubble

affordability. A capital asset is only worth what someone can pay. nickgogerty.typepad.co...

U.S. Housing: The Big Picture by the Numbers

I would suggest plotting this as a spread over time, such as here. It is much more graphically helpful. nickgogerty.typepad.co...

Upside to Falling Prices: Housing Affordabilty Index Reaches 4-Year High

the NAR affordability metric is bogus as is most anything "economic" that comes out of the NAR. The NAR is a marketing association. I bet if Coke put out a drinkability index based "economics" people wouldn't question it either.

Home Prices Down 15%

an a historical affordability basis, they have another 10% to return to the mean of incomes.

Why Is John Mauldin Defending Greenspan?

People focus a lot on prices of homes and HPA, the other side of the component never rarely gets attention. Affordability. Based on historical affordability metrics, we have 10% more to return to the mean. nickgogerty.typepad.co...

World Grain Markets at a Critical Point

the variance in production is normal, the low feedstock in storage is what it is truly disconcerting.

Jim Rogers on Investment Bank Bail Outs and the Federal Reserve

The basically bought premium against CDS market systemic risk. Trillions in notional amounts clearing were backstopped for a pretty cheap price. If you think the cost of avoiding major systemic issues is expensive try the alternative.

Deconstructing Chinese Inflation

nickgogerty.typepad.co...

the rice bowl will crack

Deconstructing Chinese Inflation

wow, if you plotted this you would see a high degree of auto-correlation in the data. the persistence would indicate a lot inflation growth in the future. Of course the stats themselves are suspect considering the source.
I think the rice bowl will crack in the next 500 days. nickgogerty.typepad.co...

Global Credit Crisis: $1.2 Trillion and Counting

ssshhh, don't tell the equity markets...

Will the Euro Overtake the Dollar as World's Reserve Currency?

that debt to GDP comment earlier didn't include medicaid and Social security liabilities 15 years out. Current indications would call for a portfolio of currencies as a logical choice.

Continuing the Jim Cramer Truth Watch

bread and circuses for the masses....

Beware the Housing-Bottom Callers

my bias is for affordability metrics to probably be overshot on the downside.

nickgogerty.typepad.co...