President Trump announced last week that certain food products and some other goods will now be exempt from his "reciprocal"* tariffs. Some of these goods are things that we can't produce here in the US, like bananas and coffee, but others are products that, for various reasons, happen to be in short supply, like beef. President Trump said these actions [...]
Are US markets, once again, in a bubble? Are AI stocks overvalued or are they discounting a new age of prosperity driven by big gains in productivity? What about gold? It's up over 50% this year, signaling...what exactly? Gold is a fear asset that usually shines when the economy is bad and stocks aren't doing so well. So, why is [...]
You knew something had to shatter the calm. The market had become too complacent, making money was too easy lately. It has been 27 trading weeks since the last big tariff announcement - Trump's "liberation day" when he announced reciprocal tariffs on the entire world last April - and in 17 of those weeks, the S&P 500 traded higher, a [...]
There has been a lot of change in economic - and other - policies this year but not much change in the economic outlook. We've had a large tax hike in the form of import taxes (tariffs), a comprehensive tax and spending bill, a DOGE attack on various government departments, more government employee layoffs than has ever happened in one [...]
The Federal Reserve cut their target for the federal funds rate by 25 basis points last week due to concerns about labor market weakness. Job creation has certainly been weak the last 3 or 4 months but that is largely due to the uncertainty created by the Trump administration's haphazard implementation of their economic program. Well, not entirely. It is [...]
The Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee met last week with both Lisa Cook and Stephen Miran voting (more on that later). The committee lowered the target for the federal funds rate by 25 basis points and hinted at future cuts: Recent indicators suggest that growth of economic activity moderated in the first half of the year. Job gains have slowed, [...]
With the dollar index and interest rates in downtrends, it seems the US economy is slowing absolutely and relative to the rest of the world. The slowdown, so far, doesn't look that severe and we are likely to get a rate cut from the Fed this week. Last September, the Fed surprised the market with a 50 basis point cut [...]
I've said many times that no one should pay much attention to the monthly payroll figures because they are barely more than wild guesses, something the current administration's economic team only recently discovered. Last week's report for August, by itself, doesn't mean much and will be revised so I wouldn't put much emphasis on it. What investors should pay attention [...]
When I first got in this crazy business nearly 35 years ago, an older advisor took me under his wing and shared with me all that he had learned over his 40+ year career. One of the first things he told me was that I shouldn't worry about the things that everyone else was worrying about. Those things were "well [...]
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