Juggling Dynamite -

Juggling Dynamite - This video offers a worthwhile summary of current conditions and parallels with the past. The more things change, the more human behaviour stays the same.  

Juggling Dynamite - A couple of must-read articles from the Globe this week examine Canada’s policy errors around immigration and housing–two tangential, interconnected themes with far-reaching impacts for our economy, present and future. See, How Canada got immigration right for so long–and then got it very, very wrong: Canada conducted a decade-long experiment. The experiment’s principal investigator was the […]

Juggling Dynamite - The Canadian housing bubble has been deflating since February 2022, and there’s room for it to run. We highlighted the mania and frenzy of financially destructive behaviours in real time, noting that once bubbles pop, property prices typically take years to recover. BMO Senior Economist Robert Kavcic apparently agrees. In a recent note highlighted on Better […]

Juggling Dynamite - OpenAI currently has a market value of $500 billion, with annualized revenue reported at $10 billion per year. It is not expected to be profitable for another 4 or 5 years and is preparing to raise tens of billions of dollars in debt to fund infrastructure plans. Moody’s has recently flagged the extent to which […]

Juggling Dynamite - The AI infrastructure boom is the most important economic story dominating the news. However, the numbers don’t add up, and that realization is starting to spread. Read more in,  This is How the AI Bubble Will Pop: Tech companies are projected to spend about $400 billion this year on infrastructure to train and operate AI models. […]

Juggling Dynamite - Add leverage and stir has been the recipe for economic expansion at all costs; thus, the seeds of a credit implosion have been planted (again). We reap what we sow, and so it goes. In this episode of The Weekly Wrap, Steve Eisman interviews Lakshmi Ganapathi from Unicus Research. They discuss why U.S. consumers are […]

Juggling Dynamite - Worthwhile macro update in this segment. Danielle DiMartino Booth, former Fed insider and CEO of QI Research, warns that the US economy is deteriorating rapidly with rising unemployment and corporate bankruptcies despite stock markets reaching new highs. Here is a direct video link.

Juggling Dynamite - While Washington deflects attention with yet another government shutdown standoff, US economic data deteriorated further in September; see US Consumer Confidence Falls to Five-Month Low on Job Concerns. The latest published U.S. Consumer Confidence (Conference Board) index came in at 94.2, down from 97.8 in August (on the lower left since August 2023). The share of […]

Juggling Dynamite - The Pandemic policy response saw a frenzied mix of debt forbearance, government handouts, policies aimed at increasing debt to stimulate home buying and speculation, mortgage rates under 2%, and an immigration surge concentrated in a few areas, especially around post-secondary schools. Not surprisingly, as interest rates normalize, immigration slows, and the housing bubble deflates, all […]

Juggling Dynamite - Years of reckless lending and borrowing are nearing another predictable end: surging defaults and losses. As Oaktree Capital Management’s co-chair and credit specialist, Howard Marks, has noted: “The worst loans are made at the best of times,” when credit and optimism are plentiful. While risk-sellers continue to insist that households are in good financial shape (just as […]

Juggling Dynamite - Institutional exposure to equities is at its highest level since November 2007, and American households’ allocation to stocks has surpassed the 2000 tech-bubble highs. Trading volume on U.S. stock exchanges last week reclaimed last April’s record high. At the same time, as debt prices have soared, the yield reward that investors are receiving from owning […]

Juggling Dynamite - Last week, Equifax Canada reported that 286,000 businesses in this country missed a loan payment last quarter. In the Greater Toronto Area, the number of mortgage lenders repossessing homes and selling them has climbed roughly 60 per cent year over year. Ninety-day-plus mortgage delinquency rates are climbing in Greater Toronto, Greater Vancouver and Canada generally, according to data from RBC. […]

Juggling Dynamite - At the end of June 2025, the Global Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) industry had 14,390 products, with 28,447 listings, from 876 providers on 81 exchanges in 63 countries (source: ETFGI). As shown below, since 2007, the $16.99 trillion USD of global market value was 5.7x the $2.948 Tn in 2015 and 20x the $831 billion of […]

Juggling Dynamite - Like last September, financial markets have high hopes for rate cuts and dovish comments from the US Fed and Bank of Canada today. Futures markets are pricing 150 basis points of Fed cuts by the end of 2026 (taking Fed policy down to 2.75% to 3%) and 75 basis points from the Bank of Canada […]

Juggling Dynamite - Since 1950, the S&P 500 index has averaged a 5-year annualized earnings growth rate of 7%. Today, S&P 500 pricing assumes a forward 5-year annualized earnings growth rate of 15% (Rosenberg Research). Leveraging this extraordinary optimism, the S&P 500 is trading at more than 23x 5-year forward earnings expectations, some 28% above the longer-term historical […]

Juggling Dynamite -

Juggling Dynamite - The salad days of near-zero interest rates enabled excess demand and price-insensitive buying across most sectors all at once; that included art markets. After a euphoric frenzy peaked in 2022, art prices have been falling since, and a world of feeder sectors and businesses is contracting along for the ride. See, The Storm Hits the Art […]

Juggling Dynamite - Backward-looking job revisions show the US and Canadian economies have been producing fewer and fewer jobs amid rising unemployment. Mass layoffs are due next. EPB Macro’s Eric Basmajian explains in the segments below. This video analyzes why elevated profit margins are giving businesses more room and time to absorb slowing economic conditions without resorting to […]

Juggling Dynamite - Statistics Canada housing data shows that, in 2021, across the provinces, 15–27% of houses were owned as an investment/secondary property (i.e., not an owner’s primary residence)—with PEI 27%, Nova Scotia 20%, Ontario/Manitoba/New Brunswick/B.C. generally in the mid-teens. Condos skewed higher, with 30–42% of condo apartments owned as secondary properties in the provinces studied. (Perspectives Journal). In related […]

Juggling Dynamite - The Toronto area saw the average home price drop for the seventh consecutive year-over-year decline in August. Detached home prices, down 10%, fell more than other property types. The average sales price for all property types has dropped by more than 23 per cent in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) since the February 2022 price […]

Juggling Dynamite - After a year of projecting confidence in America’s “strong” and “resilient” economy, at his recent Jackson Hole appearance, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell suddenly changed his tune. He expressed concern about the deteriorating labor market, saying the situation may warrant a resumption of monetary easing notwithstanding the potential inflationary risks of tariffs. This comes at […]

Juggling Dynamite - It is wild and indefensible that insider trading by politicians remains rampant. Conflicts of interest queer policy and undermine faith and trust in institutions. And yet, will efforts to ban it ever get passed? Reasonable people hope. Here is a direct video link.

Juggling Dynamite - Canada’s GDP for the second quarter contracted by 1.6% on an annualized basis, following a downwardly revised 2.0% expansion in the first quarter (Statistics Canada), resulting in a total annualized growth of 0.4% for the first six months of 2025. The weakness was in line with Bank of Canada forecasts but significantly worse than the […]

Juggling Dynamite - Markets react to the chance of a rate cut. Summertime lull was anything but boring. September and October await – two of the seasonally worst months for markets. And our guest – Danielle Park, Venable Park Investment Counsel Inc.