Weekly Market Pulse (VIDEO)
Alhambra CEO Joe Calhoun looks at whether investors have reached maximum pessimism and if now is the time to go heavier into the market.
Weekly Market Pulse: No One Said This Was Easy
Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful. Warren Buffett People are always asking me where's the outlook good, but that's the wrong question. The right question is: Where is the outlook the most miserable? Sir John Templeton, The Principle of Maximum Pessimism I don't know if we're at the point of maximum pessimism yet but [...]
Update The Conflict of Interest Rate(s)
What changed? For over a month, the Treasury market had the Fed and its rate hiking figured out. Rising recession risks had been confirmed by almost every piece of incoming data, including, importantly, labor data. It is the jobs market where much of the official “inflation” jawboning is centered, all that Phillips Curve stuff. So, whatever might seriously undermine Phillips [...]
Prices As Curative Punishment
It wasn’t exactly a secret, though the raw data doesn’t ever tell you why something might’ve changed in it. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, confirmed by industry sources, US new car sales absolutely tanked in May 2022. At a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 12.7 million, it was a quarter fewer than sales put down in May 2021 and [...]
Simple Economics and Money Math
The BLS’s most recent labor market data is, well, troubling. Even the preferred if artificially-smooth Establishment Survey indicates that something has changed since around March. A slowdown at least, leaving more questions than answers (from President Phillips).That as much because of the other employment figures, the Household Survey. April and May, in particular, not just a slowdown but a drop [...]
A Volcker Pan Recession
The Volcker Myth is simple because there isn’t math for it just voodoo economics (to borrow George HW Bush’s phrase). In theory, the FOMC finally realized after more than a decade of currency devastation and its economic, financial, and social consequences, hey, inflation and money. Once Paul Volcker took over in ’79, he acted on the belated realization, seeking to [...]
World Bank Tries Reconciling Rapidly Rising Recession Risk
As it now stands, the World Bank isn’t currently forecasting recession sweeping across the globe. Instead, the organization is merely warning this is a growing possibility. Econometric models abhor making big changes to projections within small timeframes, yet the regressions employed here couldn’t be helped this time.Back in January, at the last issue of the World Bank’s Global Economic Prospects, [...]
“Inflation” Not Inflation, Through The Eyes of Inventory
It isn’t just semantics, nor some trivial, egotistical use of quotation marks. There is an actual and vast difference between inflation and “inflation.” And in the final results, that difference isn’t strictly or even mainly about consumer prices.Who cares, most people wonder. After all, what does it really matter why prices are going up so far? The pain this causes [...]
More On Less Demand
Inconvenient timing, to say the least. Auto sales in the US last month were, well, not good. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), the government agency responsible for GDP, unit sales of light vehicles tumbled to a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 12.68 million in May 2022. That’s the lowest since December, down substantially from a not-too-high 14.50 million [...]
Demand Wasn’t Supposed To Be The Problem
They called it an atmospheric river, though I’m not really sure who “they” was nor whether the term is scientific or just media hype. Either way, in early November the Pacific Northwest of the US along with Western Canada was inundated by a, well, river of rainfall. Mudslides, torrential downpours, just a muddy mess across the entire region. At one [...]
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