COVID & The Economy (VIDEO)
Alhambra CEO Joe Calhoun details the effect Covid had on the U.S. Economy.
2023 Standard Deduction and Tax Rate
It won’t be long before you’ll be fussin’ and cussin’ again as you gather all the tax information needed to step back in the ring with the IRS on April 15th. The standard deduction and all tax brackets have been adjusted for the 2023 tax year. Here are the numbers that will be used to determine what you owe. [...]
Weekly Market Pulse: Monetary Policy Is Hard
So, is that it? Have rates peaked? Is the long bear market finally over? The market decided last week that interest rates have peaked for this cycle. And if rates have peaked then all the assets that have been pressured over the last two years can finally come up for air. Since October 18, 2021, over two years ago, investors [...]
Holding REITs in Today’s Environment (VIDEO)
Alhambra CEO Joe Calhoun explains why Alhambra has REITs in its portfolios, even in this high-interest rate environment.
Macro: Treasury refunding — We don’t need as much as we thought — yields drop
In August the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee (TBAC) told the market they were raising the net new money issuance recommendation for Q32023 from the initial guess of $733B to over $1T. They also announced a recommendation of $852B of net new money for Q42023. That spooked the bond market and 10-year yields jumped from 4% at the beginning of August [...]
Macro: GDPNow — a market mover
The most likely candidate for what moved markets today is the GDPNow update. The forecast for growth in Q4 dropped from an initial forecast of 2.3% to 1.2%. Of note, this is also a much slower growth than we saw in Q3. The bond market certainly reacted as yields continued to drop. The stock market appears to be reacting to [...]
Macro: Employment ADP and Jolts both good reports
A slight zig in the right direction versus September for both reports. ADP reported an addition of 113,000 jobs in October up from 89,000 in September. Even better, this was a steady increase throughout the month and not an isolated week. For the Jolts report, this number is a month stale. But it's a good one to look at because [...]
Don’t Miss These Year-End Financial Moves to Make Right Now
It seems like we just rang in the new year and here we are almost at the end of 2023. My dad told me the older I got, the faster things would go, and he wasn’t wrong. So, with the time left before the end of the year, there are some financial matters you need to attend to before you [...]
Weekly Market Pulse: Follow Buffett’s Rule
A simple rule dictates my buying: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. - Warren Buffett, October 16, 2008, Buy American. I Am. , New York Times That was a month after the bankruptcy filing of Lehman Brothers, in the teeth of the Great Financial Crisis. At the beginning of the article he admits that [...]
Macro: Inflation — High frequencies and crude keep Powell up at night
If we look at inflation on a year over year basis, the data series is smooth and it is coming down. The rate of decent has slowed, but that's ok, the world doesn't work in perfectly smooth arcs and waves. The month over month annualized rate is a shorter term (very volatile) rate. As such, it will lead when there [...]
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