Monthly Macro Monitor – June 2020
The stock market has recovered most of its losses from the March COVID-19 induced sell-off and the enthusiasm with which stocks are being bought – and sold but mostly bought – could lead one to believe that the crisis is over, that the economy has completely or nearly completely recovered. Unfortunately, other markets do not support that notion nor does [...]
Market vs Economy: A Time Mismatch
“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.” Stephen Hawking The economic news over the last month has been as awful as anyone alive has ever seen. Unemployment has risen from 3.5% to 14.7% since February with nearly 15 million Americans filing for jobless benefits in the last month alone. The CFNAI hit its third-worst reading ever and that [...]
Do We Need A “New” Capitalism?
Everyone, or at least all the right-thinking people, believes that capitalism needs to be reformed. Elizabeth Warren calls her version Accountable Capitalism. Marco Rubio dusted off an 1891 speech by Pope Leo to advocate what he calls Common Good Capitalism. Both are attempts to correct what these lawyers see as flaws in the current incarnation of economic organization that is [...]
OPEC + Reality
Two weeks ago, OPEC+ and the US came to a deal to cut crude oil production. President Trump hailed the deal, saying it would save “hundreds of thousands” of oil patch jobs. The Texas Railroad Commission meets today to “consider” a cut in oil production in the Lone Star state. Meanwhile, the market has made all this high-level negotiating irrelevant, [...]
The Dichotomy of Market Sentiment
It doesn’t take much effort to find bearish sentiment about stocks or the economy right now. CNN’s Fear & Greed Index, an amalgam of seven discrete market sentiment indicators, is still in the “Extreme Fear” zone. Generally, market bottoms are associated with extreme fear while tops are associated with extreme greed. And it generally works; the gauge was pegged in [...]
Regime Change
Stocks took another beating last week as the scope of the coronavirus shutdown started to sink in. The S&P 500 was down 15% last week with most of that coming on Monday after the Fed’s emergency rate cuts. Our accounts performed much better than that, but were still down on the week as corporate and municipal bonds continued to get [...]
SPECIAL REPORT: The Yield Curve And What It Means
The Yield Curve Inverted! Recession is Coming! Note: We first posted this research paper in August 2019, when the yield curve inverted for the first time in the current economic cycle. Well, it inverted once again yesterday, so... Do you need to worry about the yield curve inversion? Not if you have a strategy appropriate to your circumstances. Not if [...]
SPECIAL REPORT: Minding The Valuation Gap
Stocks are expensive. Really expensive. A wide gap has opened between the stock market and economic reality, and at some point, the gap between the two will close. Our Special Report on Market Valuations, Volume 4 in Jeff Snider's "Follow The Money" series, will help you detail how it might look when it inevitably closes, and will counsel you on how [...]
SPECIAL REPORT: 2019 In Review
No one knows what the future holds. Not me, not you, and certainly not Wall Street. But while the future is impossible to see, the present is clear for anyone willing to listen to the story the market tells every day. Here's what it said in 2019: Click here to download “2019 In Review: Year End Economic Assessment” (Sign-Up Required). This report includes [...]
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