Private foreigners sold US$ 30 billion long-term treasury bonds in April

''Private foreign investors sold a net $30.8 billion in long-term Treasury bond and notes, the largest selloff on record, the U.S. Treasury said Friday in its monthly report on cross-border capital flows.

They weren't alone. Foreign official holders of long-term U.S. debt sold out of $23.7 billion, the highest outflow since November 2008 at the height of the financial crisis.

Foreign official investors also exited from of short-term dollar debt, selling a net $30.1 billion in Treasury bills and other liabilities.

U.S. latest data has shown a steady recovery of the economy,making  intense discussions among Federal's Reserve officials of earlier tapering off its  buying of treasury debt and mortgaged-backed securities''.

Source WSJ

Slower growth for oil by train shipping

"The spread between Bakken crude at the pipeline hub of Clearbrook, Minnesota and benchmark Light Louisiana Sweet fell from nearly $30 in early March to a then-record low of around $13 in May. Analysts estimate it costs $12 a barrel for the rail journey, about three times more than via pipelines.

This week the spread has dropped to just $6 a barrel after an outage at a Canada sands production unit.

As price spreads for moving sweet North Dakota or Canadian crude to premium markets on the GulfCoast slump to their lowest since early 2011, companies are shifting more oil back through pipelines rather than using costlier railcars.

The number of railcars loaded with crude or refined fuel per week in the United States has dropped by about 5 percent since reaching a record 14,500 tank cars during May, according to Reuters calculations based on data from the Association of American Railroads released on Thursday.

At 13,664 cars through June 8, the latest week's loadings are still up 28 percent from a year ago, equivalent to about 1.4 million bpd. With crude oil estimated to make up about half of all such shipments, that's about a tenth of U.S. production. Weekly AAR data do not distinguish between crude and refined fuels.

Still, the annual growth rate is much slower than the 50 percent surge since the start of the year. In the first quarter alone, crude oil shipments jumped by 166 percent to the equivalent of 760,000 bpd, AAR said last month. Since early 2011, traffic has been growing mostly steadily every week".

It is too soon to tell that it is the beginning of a bust. Time will tell.

When interest rates are low,Real State becomes a safe haven.

''The London, Hong Kong, Sydney and New York real estate markets are hot, fuelled by low interest rates and demand by foreign investors looking for safe places to park their cash — or quick returns from flipping properties in markets where prices seem to only be going up''.

New York and London were the top contenders in the Association of Foreign Investors in Real State’s (AFIRE) 2013 survey, with the United States and United Kingdom providing the best opportunities for capital appreciation. What’s more, the US, UK and Australian markets were ranked as having the most stable and secure real estate investments, with China ranked as one of the top emerging markets''.

“Global property is a safe haven” amid political and economic uncertainty, said Gráinne Gilmore, head of residential research at London-based Knight Frank. “You can touch and see your assets.”

''But as foreign investors pile in, owning has become an expensive proposition for local residents, even as some local governments — worried about overheated housing markets — take measures to cool prices. That presents a host of questions for people who simply want to live in the city where they work, from how long the price run-up will last to whether they should buy, rent or sell to the highest bidder.

In these four cities, among others, the inventory of homes for sale has failed to keep up with demand. Local residents bid for what they can find but, especially at the high end of the market, they find themselves competing with all-cash offers from foreign investors who are more concerned about their portfolio than about living someplace''.
  The problem comes when Central Bankers keep pumping money
to their economies, for a very long period of time. This policy always produces distortions in the prices of asset classes, where money is allocated unevenly, not all asset prices rise at the same time.

Source: BBC