Interest rates surged last week on the back of a hotter-than-expected inflation report that wasn't actually that bad (see below). Not that my - or your - opinion about these things matters all that much to the market. In the short run, all that matters is what the majority believes is the truth. What they believed last week was that [...]
Markets year to date have been a lot more interesting in the details than the headlines you get in the financial media. The narrative has focused almost exclusively on Artificial Intelligence and the stocks benefitting from it. Large cap growth stocks - especially in the IT and Communications sectors - have garnered all the attention. But beneath the surface markets [...]
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been. Wayne Gretzky I took my wife to dinner Saturday night at a local, boutique hotel. The Willcox Hotel was established in the late 19th century to cater to the Winter Colony of wealthy northerners who spent their winters in South Carolina. Today it still caters to [...]
Longer term, I think there are more significant reasons to expect a weaker dollar, starting with our politicians’ (of both parties) newfound infatuation with industrial policy. Government-directed investment may create activity but long-lasting benefits have, in the past, proved quite elusive. The real problem with our government deficits and debt isn’t the debt itself but rather what the borrowed money [...]
It's an election year and you know what that means. Yes, every four years we gather as a nation, a democratic nation, to decide which of the two candidates for President available to us is the least offensive. It isn't very democratic with just two options but that is the system that the politicians built to benefit...themselves and it's all [...]
Stocks, REITs, and bonds all rallied last week on the back of what was interpreted as good news on inflation. The CPI report was better than expected, the overall level flat from September to October. Core inflation, less food and energy, was also better than expected at up 0.2%. Producer prices, reported the day after CPI were even better, coming [...]
So, is that it? Have rates peaked? Is the long bear market finally over? The market decided last week that interest rates have peaked for this cycle. And if rates have peaked then all the assets that have been pressured over the last two years can finally come up for air. Since October 18, 2021, over two years ago, investors [...]
I said a couple of years ago that I thought that once all the distortions were past, we'd be back to where we started prior to COVID, but with more debt. The decade from 2010 to 2020 was the slowest decade of nominal GDP growth since WWII and the prospect of another decade of that wasn't all that appealing but [...]
"Higher for longer." That's what the Fed says they intend to do with interest rates and investors finally decided to believe them last week. Bond yields, which have been stagnant since peaking last October, finally broke above the trading range they've been in for all that time. Short-term rates also moved higher but not as dramatically and the result was [...]
The first half of the year is over and despite a few bank failures and three more rate hikes by the Fed, stocks and bonds both managed to produce gains in the first six months of 2023. Growth stocks were the big winners as the market for most of the first half was trying to price in rate cuts before [...]
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