Be careful what you wish for lest it come true! - Various of Aesop's Fables Shinzo Abe was elected to a second term as Japanese Prime Minister in 2012 and launched his three arrows plan to revive the Japanese economy. The three arrows were: Ultra loose monetary policy, a de facto policy to weaken the Yen Fiscal policy - increased [...]
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 [...]
The first quarter of 2024 is in the books and the US economy and markets continue to defy expectations, which coming into this year were that growth and inflation would both moderate and the Fed would be able (or forced, depending on how much things slowed) to cut interest rates 0.25% as many as six times this year. In fact, [...]
Special Note: I'm in Miami this week, a mix of business and personal. I lived here for 30 years and we raised our family here but we moved to South Carolina a little over 3 years ago because we were tired of the traffic and, more than that, the irritability that comes with so many people crammed into such a [...]
Over the last two years, the evolution of the US economy has been driven by a return to “normal”. The distortions of the response to COVID had a profound impact on the economy that I believe will persist for many years. The change in cash levels at the household level were large and have proved more persistent than most expected. [...]
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 [...]
Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't [...]
We got the latest report on economic growth last week and it surprised most everyone. Real GDP expanded by an annualized 3.3% in the fourth quarter, well above the consensus estimate of 2%. Nominal GDP expanded an annualized 4.8% quarter to quarter and 5.8% year-over-year. The annualized quarter-to-quarter change is exactly the average annual change since 1990. Real GDP grew [...]
I'm back! I took most of the month of December off, as I do every year, to do some thinking. Per the title of this essay, the purpose of these year-end musings is to gain some perspective. In the day-to-day, week-to-week, movements of the markets it is easy to forget that we are investing with a timeline measured in years, [...]
Note: This will be my last commentary this year. I plan to spend December thinking about next year and spending some much-needed time with family. Here's wishing you all a Happy Holiday season. Joe Calhoun Two years ago, I wrote a weekly commentary titled Who's The Sucker, in which I made the case that the S&P 500 was not a [...]
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