April 23, 2025
There are plenty of financial doomsdayers out there that write ad nauseam about the imminent demise of the US dollar and how everyone needs to pile all their assets into Bitcoin or gold or some foreign currency as a life raft to weather the pending financial/economic...
August 12, 2024
Financial markets worldwide were met with HUGE volatility last week with trading being halted in the Japanese stocks in particular. The S&P 500 was rocked with the biggest down move in 2 years and the VIX measure of volatility launched to Covid panic levels. By...
July 8, 2024
Last week was shortened by the holiday and the economic data continued to decline. Financial markets responded with bonds and stocks being bid up in expectation that the Fed would be reducing interest rates soon. Interestingly, June was the first month in four years...
June 11, 2024
Last week the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in May the US unexpectedly added a staggering 272K payrolls, which was 50% higher than the consensus forecast of 180K and 14K more than the highest Wall Street estimate (258K from Regions Bank). Wall Street really...
June 3, 2024
We don’t have any empirical evidence, but our intuition is that a survey of economists guessing forward from 2020 would have predicted financial market doom with an overnight interest rate of 5.25%-5.5% in the middle of 2024. The economy and financial markets held up...
April 29, 2024
The dichotomies in the financial world continue to manifest with several contradictions simultaneously occurring and financial commentators scratching their heads in an attempt to make sense of things. Earnings season is in full steam this week – and looking...
March 25, 2024
The financial markets in the U.S. never stray very far away from the question of what the Federal Reserve is going to do with interest rates and this week is no different. Stock and bond markets are currently pricing in the Fed not raising interest rates until the...
January 8, 2024
We have mentioned in the past how we are skeptical of the reliability of some government numbers relating to the economy that we have seen over the last few years. This is not a political statement. This is simply an opinion after watching governmental numbers and...
December 18, 2023
The Federal Reserve pivoted off of “higher for longer” with regard to interest rates at this week’s meeting. Chairman Powell came into the Fed meeting being quoted as recently as December 1 saying “We are prepared to tighten policy further” implying that they may not...
December 11, 2023
Analyzing the current performance of the entire U.S. economy is clearly a subjective endeavor. There are some obviously very good things going on in some manufacturing and tech industry spaces. On the other side of the coin some industries -such as residential home...
