Nothing happened last week. Stocks and bonds and commodities continued to trade and move around in price but there was no news to which those movements could be attributed. The economic news was a trifle and what there was told us exactly nothing new about the economy. A report that wholesale inventories rose 0.6% cannot be turned into market moving [...]
Alhambra CEO Joe Calhoun compares the similarities between today's bear market and past ones, plus last week's data on the economy, employment, and whether the new data points to recession.
I stopped in a local antique shop over the weekend. The owner is retiring and trying to clear out as much as she can before they close the doors so I paid a mere $3 for the Life magazine above. I think it might be worth many multiples of that price for investors who think our situation today is somehow [...]
The lagged effect of inflation. Jay Powell: Call me Ishmael.
Since the summer of 2020, my expectation for the US economy has been that once all the COVID distortions are gone, it would revert to its previous trend growth of around 2%. And that seems to be exactly what is going on with the economy right now. There was a shift in consumption preference during COVID for goods over services [...]
Alhambra CEO Joe Calhoun discusses how last week's Federal Reserve meeting contained nothing new and actually confirmed what the markets have been saying about interest rates and recession.
Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?” Sherlock Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” Gregory: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.” Sherlock Holmes: “That was the curious incident.” From Silver Blaze by Arthur Conan Doyle, 1892 It is hard to determine sometimes what [...]
Cui Bono: To whom is it a benefit? A principle that probable responsibility for an act or event lies with one having something to gain. One of the most interesting things about this economy is the raft of seemingly contradictory data and information. Over the last couple of days I've seen a lot of tweets and blog posts about this [...]
New home sales were reported for July as down nearly 13% to 511K, a number that is just about the average since 2010 (543k). But that doesn't tell the whole story obviously. New home sales have fallen sharply since December of last year, down 39%. The drop from the peak in August 2020 is even more dramatic, down nearly 51%. [...]
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