The Lombard Review

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Every Lombard Review analysis, newest first: central banks, rates, currencies, credit and corporate finance.

Special Report

Lunar New Year: China's reopening lifts the yuan

Reopening flows strengthen yuan

Business

Banks' easy profits are about to end

NII peak as funding costs reprice

World

Japan spends trillions to defend one number

Unlimited purchases vs speculative JGB shorts

Economy

The inflation number the Fed secretly cares about

Services ex-housing predictive power

World

Europe's lucky warm winter

Gas price collapse unwinds fiscal subsidies

Business

Tech's layoffs are really about profits

Opex cuts replace growth capex

Markets & Finance

Germany's bond shortage is finally easing

Collateral scarcity drives Bund swap spreads

Special Report

New Year: Everyone expects a recession. That's the warning sign

Crowded forecasts underperform

Special Report

New Year's Eve: The year the classic portfolio failed

Stock-bond correlation turns positive

Economy

Is the recession alarm broken?

Term-spread models under QE-distorted curves

Economy

How long can shoppers keep spending their pandemic savings?

Consumption cushion drawdown rate

Special Report

Boxing Day: The $816bn problem of returned presents

Reverse logistics erode margins

Special Report

Christmas: Why markets go quiet — and fragile — at year-end

Year-end balance-sheet constraints

Business

The debt bill companies have pushed to 2024

Closed HY market pushes refinancing into 2024–25

Markets & Finance

Japan surprises everyone, and bonds everywhere feel it

YCC band widening releases JGB repatriation

Economy

The Fed and the market disagree. Someone is wrong

Market-implied path vs SEP median

Economy

Goods are getting cheaper. Services aren't

Core goods deflation offsets services

Business

The companies that only survive on cheap money

Floating-rate coverage ratios at 8% HY

Markets & Finance

Has the dollar peaked?

Rate-differential peak precedes DXY reversal

Economy

Wages are rising — by how much depends on who you ask

Composition bias across wage measures

Economy

China reopens, and the world gets a new inflation problem

Commodity demand rebound vs goods disinflation

Special Report

Cyber Monday: What the discounts say about inflation

Online price indices lead CPI goods

Special Report

Black Friday: Shop now, pay later, default sooner

Revolving credit funds holiday spend

Business

Retailers ordered for a boom that never came

Markdowns convert inventory glut into margin loss

Special Report

Thanksgiving: Why your turkey cost 20% more

Avian-flu supply shock hits food margins

Markets & Finance

The bond market is screaming recession

Curve prices policy error, not growth

Economy

Rents are already falling. Official data hasn't noticed

New-lease indices lead CPI rent ~12 months

Economy

One good inflation report does not make a trend

Single-month relief vs persistence of core

Markets & Finance

FTX spent its customers' money. That was the business

Commingled deposits funded affiliate risk

Special Report

Singles' Day: Alibaba stops showing its numbers

Disclosure silence signals weak consumer

Economy

$2trn is sitting at the Fed doing nothing

MMF cash parked at Fed drains private liquidity

Economy

The jobs report that contradicts itself

Survey methodology gap in employment signal

Economy

Why slowing down could mean the Fed goes higher

Step-down in pace trades against longer hold

Special Report

Halloween: The scariest year for bonds in memory

Fat tails in Treasury returns

Business

Meta's spending spree just cost it a quarter of its value

Capex guide without revenue path crushes multiple

Markets & Finance

Is the world's safest market becoming hard to trade?

Dealer balance-sheet limits thin Treasury depth

Special Report

Diwali: India's gold habit is weighing on the rupee

Festive gold imports widen current-account deficit

Markets & Finance

Bond investors want to be paid for waiting again

Affine model decomposition of long yields

Markets & Finance

The Bank of England takes away the safety net

Backstop expiry tests market-clearing price

Markets & Finance

Banks are stuck holding Elon Musk's Twitter debt

Committed underwriting marked below par

Markets & Finance

Japan is fighting the dollar. The dollar is winning

Sterilised intervention vs carry differential

Economy

Two jobs reports, two stories. Which one matters?

Vacancy-unemployment ratio vs payroll momentum

Markets & Finance

Britain learns the price of a budget nobody believed

Unfunded tax cuts reprice sovereign risk premium

Personal Finance

Rich on paper, short of cash: the pension paradox

DB schemes liquidate illiquid assets to meet margin

Markets & Finance

How Britain's pension funds nearly broke the bond market

Leveraged liability hedges force gilt sales into falling market

Economy

Nineteen Fed officials, nineteen different futures

Dot dispersion as policy-uncertainty proxy

Economy

The inflation the Fed can't fix: your haircut and your dentist

Labour-intensive services track wage growth

Business

Buybacks just got more expensive

1% excise plus costlier debt vs earnings yield

Markets & Finance

The euro falls below the dollar, and gas is to blame

Gas import bill flips current account to deficit

Economy

Don't bet on inflation falling just because the maths says so

YoY vs 3m-annualised CPI divergence misleads