While it seems obvious that the future should feature a lower dollar and gold continuing to outperform stocks, that is far from assured. That is the consensus view and while the crowd can be right for a long time, its clairvoyance is inversely proportional to its size. The more consensus the consensus becomes, the less likely it is to happen. [...]
This is, in my opinion, the most interesting chart in all of finance. This shows the return from gold versus the total return of the S&P 500 since 1/1/2000. As you can see, gold's return has exceeded that of stocks by almost 3 to 1; it isn't even close. If you had bought gold at the turn of the century, [...]
As is my custom, I'll be taking a break from these weekly updates for the rest of the year. That doesn't mean I'll be loafing my way to year end though. I'll probably do some short posts as things come up before year end but my main focus will be on the 2026 outlook that we'll publish in a couple [...]
A few weeks ago I asked the question that everyone is asking today: Is This A Bubble? My answer, as it is for most questions about the future, is that I don't know. But there are some things I do know: The S&P 500 is priced for low future returns, quite possibly negative on a real basis over the next [...]
Was that it? Was that the top? A week ago, the market fell 2.7% as President Trump announced an additional 100% tariff on Chinese goods starting November 1st. Since that Friday selloff, the market has stabilized and recovered a little over half that one day loss. The S&P 500 is now down just about 1.5% from its all-time high. Is [...]
The federal government shut down last week so we didn't get the monthly employment report last Friday and I think that may be the best news investors have gotten all year. I expect a lot of government generated economic reports to be missed during the shutdown, which I think could drag on a lot longer than previous versions. With the [...]
The price of gold set an all-time record last week, with futures trading over $3800 and spot prices just a bit less. The new price high was also an inflation-adjusted all-time high, breaking the previous record set in 1980 of about $3500 in today's dollars. The most important question facing investors today is this: why has gold more than doubled [...]
I've said many times that no one should pay much attention to the monthly payroll figures because they are barely more than wild guesses, something the current administration's economic team only recently discovered. Last week's report for August, by itself, doesn't mean much and will be revised so I wouldn't put much emphasis on it. What investors should pay attention [...]
Last week President Trump nominated the head of his Council of Economic Advisors, Stephen Miran, to fill a vacant seat on the board of the Federal Reserve. Miran will fill the seat recently vacated by Adriana Kugler but supposedly only to complete her term, which ends on January 31st, 2026. I say supposedly because I suspect that he'll be there [...]
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 [...]
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