Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?” Sherlock Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” Gregory: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.” Sherlock Holmes: “That was the curious incident.” From Silver Blaze by Arthur Conan Doyle, 1892 It is hard to determine sometimes what [...]
Cui Bono: To whom is it a benefit? A principle that probable responsibility for an act or event lies with one having something to gain. One of the most interesting things about this economy is the raft of seemingly contradictory data and information. Over the last couple of days I've seen a lot of tweets and blog posts about this [...]
New home sales were reported for July as down nearly 13% to 511K, a number that is just about the average since 2010 (543k). But that doesn't tell the whole story obviously. New home sales have fallen sharply since December of last year, down 39%. The drop from the peak in August 2020 is even more dramatic, down nearly 51%. [...]
The Chicago Fed National Activity Index rose to 0.27 in July with all four categories of indicators rising. The 3 month average was unchanged at -0.09. That indicates growth is slightly below trend and is far from the recession threshold of -0.7. The index had been down for two consecutive months and both May and June were revised slightly lower. [...]
History never repeats itself. Man always does. Voltaire Mark Twain is credited with a similar saying, that history doesn't repeat but it rhymes. Of course, there is scant evidence that Clemens said anything of the sort just as Voltaire may or may not have penned the quote above. But both men were much wittier than I - than most - [...]
Over the last few months, as the outlook for the economy turned more sour, I've used these weekly commentaries to warn you not to get too negative. Long-term investors need to have a strategy they can stick with no matter what happens, a strategy that keeps them on an even keel. If you were so nervous that you sold out [...]
How odd is this economy? Two economic reports from last week, attempting to measure essentially the same thing, reported results that were so different they could be about two different countries. At 9:45 Wednesday morning, S&P Global reported their US Services PMI for July as 47.3 versus June's 52.7, a sudden and large one-month drop. When they reported the preliminary [...]
It all became very clear to me sitting out there today, that every decision I've ever made, in my entire life, has been wrong. My life is the complete opposite of everything I want it to be. Every instinct I have, in every aspect of life, be it something to wear, something to eat... It's all been wrong. Every one. [...]
Where there is no hope it is incumbent on us to invent it. Albert Camus The economic data released last week was almost uniformly bad. We started the week with the NAHB Housing Index, a measure of builder sentiment, which fell from 67 to 55, much less than expected. Next up was more news on the housing market with starts [...]
Investors crave certainty. They want to know that there are definitive signals for them to follow as they adjust their investments to fit the current market and economy. They want to know that A leads to B leads to C. Tea leaf readers are always in high demand on Wall Street and they continue to find employment despite their almost [...]
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