How can the US re-open the Strait of Hormuz? That is the $64,000 question for investors today and the Trump administration so far doesn't have an answer beyond asking other countries for help (which they probably should have done before they started this). While Asian and European countries certainly have an incentive to get the strait open and oil flowing [...]
"Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." - Winston Churchill in a speech to the House of Commons in 1948 "History doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes." - Mark Twain I saw quite a bit of commentary last week about the similarities between the events of today and the early 1970s, specifically [...]
Predicting the future course of the markets - interest rates, stock prices, commodity prices - is impossible. That is true even in times when the future seems set, when it seems predictable, when there is consensus about the impact of all the factors that affect markets and ultimately economies. It is even more true during times of great uncertainty, times [...]
What's in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet. - Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene II The Supreme Court finally released its ruling on President Trump's use of the IEEPA (International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977) to impose universal tariffs on foreign goods and the verdict was utterly [...]
The Wall Street Journal published an article last week about the concentration of the S&P 500 and why you shouldn't worry about it. The gist of the article is that the index has been more concentrated in the past and calamity didn't ensue so it must be okay now. The author, Jason Zweig, is one of my favorite financial writers [...]
The latest government shutdown ended last week, after a mere four days, but that was apparently enough to prevent the Bureau of Labor Statistics from releasing the January employment report. It will be released this week instead (2/11) but I'd prefer if they waited about six months. These reports are one of the most anticipated by Wall Street and are [...]
While it seems obvious that the future should feature a lower dollar and gold continuing to outperform stocks, that is far from assured. That is the consensus view and while the crowd can be right for a long time, its clairvoyance is inversely proportional to its size. The more consensus the consensus becomes, the less likely it is to happen. [...]
This is, in my opinion, the most interesting chart in all of finance. This shows the return from gold versus the total return of the S&P 500 since 1/1/2000. As you can see, gold's return has exceeded that of stocks by almost 3 to 1; it isn't even close. If you had bought gold at the turn of the century, [...]
Most investment firms kick off the new year with "outlook" pieces, offering futile predictions on the S&P 500's year-end close or the frequency of Fed rate hikes. I try to avoid such oracular activity and stick to analyzing the present, which isn't as easy as it first sounds. But I do read many of these tomes - if brevity is [...]
As we near the end of the first year of President Trump's second presidential term, the debate about his economic policies hasn't changed much. That's because it isn't an economic debate mostly, but a political one and that applies to the public as well as economists (yes, they are as vulnerable to political bias as anyone else). Democrats hate Trump's [...]
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