Weekly Market Pulse: The Crossroads
The first half of this year saw a lot of old trends turned upside down. Foreign stocks outperformed US stocks, gold had its best first half performance since 2007 and the dollar its worst start to a year since 1973. It was that year that the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates breathed its last. It had started to [...]
Weekly Market Pulse: Uncertainty Rules Everything Around Me
If, at the beginning of the year, anyone had predicted what actually happened in the first half of 2025, they would have been ridiculed and dismissed as delusional. If you were told that... Between January and April, the average US tariff rate will rise from 2.5% to 27% Among the Trump administration's first moves on trade will be to impose [...]
Weekly Market Pulse: The Turkey Leg
Note: I wrote most of this commentary prior to the US strike on Iran and I decided to go ahead with it anyway. I don't know any more than you do about what is going on in the Middle East and trying to predict what will happen in the coming days and weeks is a fool's errand. We have a [...]
Weekly Market Pulse: The Uncertainty of Uncertainty
Oil jumped 7.5% last Friday in the wake of the Israeli attack on Iran but the reaction in most other markets was surprisingly muted. The dollar, which normally catches a bid in these situations, was up just 0.27% and US Treasuries actually sold off on the news. Gold was the preferred safe haven this time, up 1.4% on the week. [...]
Weekly Market Pulse: Extension Day?
In about five weeks, the pause on President Trump's "liberation day" tariffs will expire. So far, the US has come to an agreement, of sorts, with exactly one country - the UK. That outline of an agreement so far doesn't mean anything because the full terms haven't been agreed to nor implemented. In other words, we don't yet have a [...]
Weekly Market Pulse: Time Out
The tariff rollercoaster continues. This week most of President Trump's tariffs were ruled to be outside the scope of the law he used to impose them. I was not surprised in the least because, as I wrote a few weeks ago, I actually took the time to read the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the word tariff doesn't even [...]
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