This is a holiday-shortened week in the US but there is some important data on tap. Retail sales are expected to show a month-to-month rise for the first time since September. Year-over-year numbers remain pretty subdued and likely will until life returns to something resembling normal. Producer prices will likely rise but inflation continues its benign ways. It is likely [...]
One of the hardest things to understand as an investor is that markets sometimes - often - don't line up with economic reality. Markets rarely reflect current economic conditions and at times they seem to discount a future that seems highly unlikely at best, and delusional at worst. That seems to be the case today, as stocks sit near all-time [...]
This isn’t about COVID. It’s been building since the end of August, a shift in mood, perception, and reality that began turning things several months before even then. With markets fickle yet again, a lot today, what’s going on here?What you’ll hear or have already heard is something about Europe and more lockdowns, fears about a second wave of the [...]
They should be drooling over the prospects of a clearing path toward normality. The pain and disaster of 2020’s economic hole receding into a more pleasant 2021 which would have been in position to conceivably pay it all back before any long run damage. Getting back to just even with February instead is becoming a distant probability, the kind of [...]
According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), crude oil production fell below 10 mbpd during the final week of August 2020. Hurricane Laura had looped through the Gulf of Mexico, forcing the widespread shutting down of drilling and pumping activity throughout the offshore oil patch. It was the first time total American crude supply had dropped below that level [...]
The key word in the whole thing is “bias.” For a very long time, people working in and around the finance industry have sought to gain tremendous advantages. No explanation for the motive is required. Charts, waves, technical (sounding) analysis and so on. To many dispassionate observers there was always this sort of improper religious fervor to it rather than [...]
Is three weeks a new record? That’s about how long Jay Powell’s performance bought him across most major markets. It was May 17, a Sunday night, when he appeared on 60 Minutes and, pardon me again, lied his ass off. One right after another, starting with the most obvious falsehood that his gang at the Federal Reserve “saw it coming.” [...]
It has to be a combination of confirmation bias and rationalizations. Not even the official story finishes up with the fairy tale ending. The “V” people seem to be ignoring what the most optimistic group is actually saying. And these optimists absolutely want it to be that way.It bears repeating the “V” case; that once the non-economic shutdowns are lifted, [...]
Why didn’t 1987 turn out to be 1929 redux? Alan Greenspan was deathly afraid this would be the case, and in turn he made everyone else unnecessarily upset along the same lines. Especially Congress. The fact that both stock market crashes occurred during the month of October, though, actually ends the similarities. That plus clueless Federal Reserve officials.Why the one [...]
On Tuesday, March 18, 2008, the S&P 500 big cap stock index soared. By the end of closing that day, the index had added 4.2%. Investors were increasingly optimistic that new kinds of “stimulus” which had been hastily introduced over the prior few weeks and months would provide enough of a boost so that the economic and financial downside might [...]
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