The economic slowdown we've been writing about for months officially arrived last Friday in the form of a particularly weak employment report. The number of new jobs created last month - or at least the WAG the BLS makes at such things on a monthly basis - was a mere 235,000 or roughly a cool half-million less than expected by [...]
Jerome Powell delivered his long-anticipated speech at Jackson Hole last week. Well actually, I have no idea if he was actually in Jackson Hole since the speech was delivered electronically, another victim of the delta variant. The virus itself rated barely a mention in Mr. Powell's remarks and I think that is probably as it should be. There has been [...]
Alhambra CEO Joe Calhoun discusses last week's uptrend in the dollar, the falling growth cycle in the economy, interest rates, and gold.
This week marks a change in our economic environment or at least our perception of it. Last year, post-COVID onset, we characterized the environment as one marked by a falling dollar and improving growth. To be exact, that is the environment the markets reflected; interest rates were rising, the yield curve was steepening and the dollar was falling. That changed [...]
Alhambra CEO Joe Calhoun talks about the 50-year anniversary of coming off the gold standard, and market-based dollar prices
Today is the 50th anniversary of the "Nixon shock", the day President Richard Nixon closed the gold window and ended the post-WWII Bretton Woods currency agreement. That agreement, largely a product of John Maynard Keynes, pegged the dollar to gold and most other currencies to the dollar. It wasn't a true gold standard as only other countries that were party [...]
Remember "The New Normal"? Back in 2009, Bill Gross, the old bond king before Gundlach came along, penned a market commentary called "On the Course to a New Normal" which he said would be: "a period of time in which economies grow very slowly as opposed to growing like weeds, the way children do; in which profits are relatively static; [...]
Alhambra CEO Joe Calhoun talks about investors panicking "in" to markets instead of out.
They're out there panicking right now. I can feel it. They're out there. They're panicking. Look at them. - Eddie Murphy as Billy Ray Valentine in Trading Places I thought of that scene the other day when a good friend in the investment business told me that investors today are panicking into the market rather than out as they were [...]
Alhambra CEO Joe Calhoun discusses the quick dip and recovery that happened last week and what investors should do when considering what to buy.
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