Part 1 is here, Orderly or Not (short version: not). Also noted yesterday, the Fed sees no risks of bubble trouble because they are looking at it all from the 2008 perspective. That is completely wrong-headed; if there is a “next one” it will have nothing to do with subprime mortgages, or even mortgages and real estate. By March 2007, [...]
I generally remain noncommittal about giving specific predictions about the future because there is simply no way toward predilection. We can think about probabilities as a guide for analysis, particularly in setting investment guidelines, but to offer targets for factors like GDP or some stock index is pointless. Even now, with all that is taking place of economic unraveling, there [...]
If there were an economic recovery in the US then we would certainly find it on the fiscal budgets of the various states. You cannot spend or even generate income anymore without taking incidence of a taxable transaction. So if the US economy has been doing what the FOMC says it has, then the taxman will tell us. Even here [...]
I really hate the term bubble. With regard to markets, frankly it has no meaning. One man's bubble is another man's rational bull market. There is no agreed upon valuation metric which, once exceeded, pegs a market or a sector or a stock as a bubble. My view on the matter is that "bubbles' are about behavior, about seemingly normal [...]
Margin debt again escalated in June, putting some emphasis back into the smaller caps and their high beta compatriots. After surpassing the dot-com bubble’s previous levels for both nominal margin usage and negative investor net worth in February, some caution was re-admitted if only briefly. There wasn’t much discernable impact on the broader market indices, more than suggesting that margin [...]
If you go to the “fact sheet” for the Russell 2000 index trying to find the standard PE valuation metric, the only one provided by the index keepers is something called “P/E Ex-Neg Earnings.” The current valuation offered is 22.61, which sounds much more reasonable than the latest (April 25) raw PE estimate from the Wall Street Journal: 101.65. The [...]
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