Weekly Recap - Week ending 28th June 2013: Not bad, not great

- The real Real skinny

The real skinny: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-07-01/biggest-problem-currently

- Better Market results than expected (for now...)

• Europe: Confidence slightly up. Although all equity indices down for June, with only CAC and Dax up in the 2nd quarter (0.2% and 2.1% respectively).
  
• US: Robust new home/pending home sales; higher personal incomes and spending. Case-Shiller home prices increased at a record pace. (see: http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2013/06/case-shiller-comp-20-house-prices.html) - although:  June Chicago PMI slumped to 51.6 (from May's 58.7) However, the final consumer sentiment index from the University of Michigan was upwardly revised to 84.1 from the preliminary reading of 82.7.
  
• China: Industrial profits up. But continuing worry about growth. Shanghai Composite up 1.5% (property developers lead the way).
  
• Japan: Better industrial production, construction orders and retail sales. Stocks were up for the week (although down for June), Nikkei advanced during the quarter). Nikkei jumped 3.5% - highest level since 31st May (weaker yen http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=USDJPY%3DX#symbol=;range=1y;compare=;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined;, and tapering concerns slightly put to the side).
  
• India: Sensex advanced in Q2.

- Frontrunning: Fed tapering?

QE infinity (and beyond...) dead?
Why impose QE? To better labour markets; to better downside risks; better housing market. What do we have today? Marginally better labour market, better housing market (for now); smaller fiscal cliff; consumers still consuming. Now that the purpose has been served, it may be time to really speculate that the Fed will taper QE, in fact the Fed's tapering of QE could be construed as a success, as a demonstration that things have improved. Forecast tapering for the end of the year (mainly because I can edit this blog post if I'm wrong).