Montreal, Canada

News that Stanley Druckenmiller was calling it quits after thirty years in the hedge fund business came as a big surprise to investors. His departure accelerates the list of legendary hedge fund managers closing shop and heading for less stressful pastures in the post-2008 credit crisis environment whereby macro trades have grown difficult to execute profitably.

Druckenmiller joins other legendary macro traders heading into retirement, including Julian Robertson (2001), Tim Barakett (2009) and recently, Richard Grubman.

Montreal, Canada

Who’s buying Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities or TIPS? Rates are at rock bottom and inflation is falling, not rising.

For the first time since their introduction in 1997, TIPS now harbor the lowest yields.

Yesterday, the five-year TIPS closed the session yielding nothing – that’s right, absolutely zero. At this morning’s opening, the note has dropped a bit to yield a mind-blowing 0.06% or six basis points! That’s not exactly the Field of Dreams when it comes to yield.

Montreal, Canada

Among the major industrialized economies, Germany ranks as one of the best performing economies this year in the G-7. A plunging EUR in 2010 has been a boon to exports, which grew 29% in June compared to 12 months earlier.

German GDP in the second quarter expanded by 2.2%, almost 9% on an annualized basis – the best performance since reunification 20 years ago. Germany had a trade surplus of $77 billion dollars for the first five months of the year, according to latest statistics.

Zurich, Switzerland

The odds were always high that one or more central banks would eventually bungle monetary or fiscal policy in the post-2009 credit crisis recovery environment. In the context of the most formidable and extensive unorthodox monetary operations since the 1930s, the Federal Reserve has seemingly pulled almost every rabbit out of its hat since August 2007.

Did investors really believe we’d get through this mess without a hiccup?

A whipsaw is characterized by a quick reversal in price movement from one direction to the other by a security or index. In July we witnessed a textbook example of a whipsaw, as the S&P 500 gained 6.9% on the heels of a 5.4% loss for the previous month. These dizzying market movement can be quite frustrating for investors who are left desperately trying to keep pace with the direction of the market.