A new estimate of unemployment rate in 2011 is now available for Italy. In December 2011, it almost touched 9.0%. Here we validate our model of unemployment as a function of the change in labour force.     We introduced the model…

When interpreting labor statistics one should be very careful with Januaries. This is the month when major changes to the population estimates (including so called population controls, i.e. the distribution of population over age/sex/race) are introduc…

First published in the May/June 2011 issue of Foreign Affairs, The Black Swan of Cairo: How Suppressing Volatility Makes the World Less Predictable and More Dangerous is a thought-provoking effort by co-authors Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Mark Blyth to a…

Yesterday’s post on Natural Gas, Contango and UNG appears to have generated a fair amount of interest across a broad base of readers, so for an encore I have decided to forego the typical collection of dazzling Liszt miniatures and skip directly to m…

I have talked at length in this space about the contango and negative roll yield issues that plague VXX. Periodically these discussions trigger a question from a reader about the impact of contango on some of the other ETPs. Just to be clear, as far a…

TheFRB  and CBO have recently projected the evolution of key macroeconomic variables including real GDP and the rate of unemployment. In our blog, we have developed a very accurate model linking the rate of unemployment in the US to the rate …

Earlier this month, the CBOE launched futures on the CBOE Emerging Markets ETF Volatility Index (VXEEM) and barely three weeks later, VXEEM options began trading today. For more information on VXEEM options, which are based on the popular EEM emerging…

Below is the chart I used today when tweeting price projections for DX (dollar futures). I think all targets I called hit, so hats off to beginners luck. The last one I called surprised me the most since I made the projection about 4 or 5 hours before …

Three years after their launch, VXX has about four times as many assets as its mid-term sibling, VXZ. When it comes to public relations and media column inches, I imagine the ratio is more like 50-1 in the favor of VXX. In many ways VXZ is the unloved …

Three years after their launch, VXX has about four times as many assets as its mid-term sibling, VXZ. When it comes to public relations and media column inches, I imagine the ratio is more like 50-1 in the favor of VXX. In many ways VXZ is the unloved …