Inflation Expectations Deflate Dollar

With the Democrats winning the Senate last night, the 10 year yield is above 1%. Why? Not because of real growth expectations. But because of inflation expectations. They are higher than when we started the year (see the blue line)!

How does this link with the Dollar? Inflation means the dollar loses purchasing power. All else equal, that means that the dollar will be worth less than other currencies.

You can see in this graph that inflation expectations and the dollar are mirror opposites of each other.

I expect this trend to continue this year – it may be a good year for foreign investments relative to the US.

U.S. Celebrity’s Endorsement of Currencies

Word yesterday an NFL Player is getting paid half his salary in Bitcoin. (it’s not true actually) But I thought it would be interesting to go back and look at a very famous endorsement of non-USD by a celebrity: Jay-Z and the Euro.

In Jay-Z’s “Blue Magic” video, instead of showing off those Franklin’s with small faces (aka “Money Ain’t A Thang”), Jay-Z flashed 500 Euro Notes.

How did that work out? Well, let’s see what the Euro/$ exchange rate did after the video.

The Euro topped out just a few months later and is still about 30% lower in value today then back in 2007. (I’m even ignoring the negative German bond yields.)

Bottom line: Jay-Z made the classic naive investor error: Buy high.