ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR INVESTMENT PROFESSIONAL BEFORE MAKING ANY INVESTMENT DECISION
March 14, 2026 | Agriculture & Global Cooling
QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; Are you familiar with Professor Easterbrook of Western Washington University who agrees with you and is projecting a decline in temperatures for the next three decades? It seems that those who simply claim that it has been getting warmer live in a bubble of biased news. One even said to me that it […]
March 14, 2026 | Tech Talk for Saturday March 14th 2026
The Bottom Line The S&P 500 and TSX Composite Index have a history of reaching a seasonal low in mid-March (with the S&P 500 Index outperforming the TSX Composite until mid-December). What about this year? Short term (20 days) momentum indicators for both indices are deeply oversold. OnFriday, the S&P 500 indicator dropped to 23.21% […]
March 13, 2026 | AI’s Power Hunger
The biggest constraint on artificial intelligence is not chips, software, or capital. It is electricity. Now the tech giants are finally admitting it. Seven major companies, including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI, have signed a pledge committing to supply or finance their own power generation for the massive AI data centers […]
March 13, 2026 | Trump Gambles on War with Iran
Trump’s Iran Gamble Could Trigger an Oil Shock 20 percent. That is the share of global oil supply that normally passes through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow shipping channel between Iran and Oman. If Iran keeps that chokepoint blocked, the consequences for inflation, interest rates and the global economy could be severe. The recent […]
March 13, 2026 | Canadian Bond Prices Surge on ‘Unexpected’ Job Losses
In February, the Canadian economy ‘unexpectedly’ lost 83,000 jobs, the most since January 2022 (shown below since 2020), driving the unemployment rate up to 6.7% after a 25,000-job loss in January. Economists surveyed had expected employment to rise by 10,000 and the jobless rate to be 6.6%. Employment declines were widespread and across both goods […]
March 12, 2026 | US Inflation Looks Tame for Now — But That May Not Last
The latest CPI report for February 2026 came in largely as expected, and, on the surface, Washington will likely celebrate the numbers. Consumer prices rose 0.3% for the month and 2.4% year-over-year. Core CPI, excluding food and energy, rose 0.2% for the month and is running at 2.5% annually. By the standards of the […]
March 12, 2026 | Culture War, Part 1: Ayaan Hirsi Ali Defends the West
I’m just going to say it: Christian and Islamic cultures can’t seem to co-exist in liberal/capitalist societies. And deciding who gets to define right and wrong is going to require some kind of culture war. The UK seems to be the front line. See: Civil War in the UK? UK Civil War: Wow, That Escalated Quickly The […]
March 12, 2026 | Why So Many Private Credit Investors Want Out
The plan to bring mom-and-pop investors into ‘alternative’ investments was always about finding a pool of greater fools to keep inflows coming. The ‘free money’ years covered up a lot of naked swimmers that are now being revealed. When people need cash, they sell what they can, and this is how liquidation contagion spreads between […]
March 11, 2026 | About That: How High Will The U.S.-Israel War with Iran Push Gas Prices?
Oil and gas prices are rapidly rising around the world amid the U.S.-Israel war with Iran. Andrew Chang explains what’s driving the surge and why predicting the next moves in the oil market is so difficult. Here is a direct video link. Spikes in oil prices, especially late in business cycles, when asset prices and debt […]
March 11, 2026 | Canada’s Housing Crisis Shows the Consequences of the Easy Money Era
Canada’s housing market has become one of the most expensive in the developed world, and the affordability crisis continues to worsen despite rising interest rates. Mortgage payments as a share of household income are now near record levels, leaving many first-time buyers completely priced out of the market while existing homeowners face significantly higher borrowing […]
March 10, 2026 | Subcutaneous Microchip Mandates
There was a time when warnings about governments embedding identification technology directly into the human body would have sounded like something from George Orwell rather than a public policy debate. Yet here we are. Washington State is now considering legislation to prohibit employers from forcing workers to accept subcutaneous microchip implants. The fact that […]
March 10, 2026 | Fuel Costs Tax Everyone
Last week’s near 35% spike in the price of oil (WTIC) was the biggest gain in futures trading history, dating back to 1983 (shown below, courtesy of Bespoke Investment Group). After closing at $90.90 a barrel on Friday, the price rose to $119.48 intraday yesterday, then slumped 15% to $80 this afternoon. That’s still up 47% […]
March 9, 2026 | Upsetting the Apple Cart
Happy Monday Morning! Last week we wrote a piece titled ‘Landmark Agreements’ in which the Federal Government signed an agreement acknowleding aboriginal title for the Musqueam First Nations across most of Metro Vancouver. It was a “Landmark Agreement” according to the Feds, yet received zero mainstream media coverage. Why it received so little coverage we’ll […]
March 9, 2026 | Canada and Europe Strengthen Trade Ties as Global Economy Fragments
Canada and the European Union agreed to modernize their existing trade agreement while launching negotiations for a new digital trade pact. On the surface, this appears to be another routine trade update between two long-standing partners. In reality, it reflects a much deeper shift underway in the global economy as nations begin quietly restructuring trade […]
March 8, 2026 | Zuckerberg’s Huge Branding Problem
[Your editor is taking a busman’s holiday in San Francisco. Although trading touts will update as usual and I’ll be active in the chat room, this commentary and the next come from the archive. You can judge for yourself whether they were sufficiently on-target to still be relevant. RA] Stocks looked leaden as the week ended, […]
March 8, 2026 | AI and Creative Destruction
If you’re tuning in to see what I think of the latest Iran fireworks, you may be disappointed. My opinion is as accurate as market reactions have been. Which, given wild swings both ways, suggests no one really knows what to expect. So rather than dwell on a topic where your insight is as good […]
March 8, 2026 | Has the Great Taking Begun?
If you (like me) keep mixing up Blackstone and BlackRock, you can relax now. They’re both in serious financial trouble, so you can assert that either is “imploding” and be more-or-less right: BlackRock fund limits withdrawals as redemptions rattle private credit (Reuters) – BlackRock (BLK.N) said on Friday it has limited withdrawals from a flagship debt fund […]
March 8, 2026 | Trading Desk Notes for March 7, 2026
Let’s start with crude oil Nymex front-month April WTI traded above $92.50 on Friday, up ~$25 (38%) on the week, the largest ever weekly price rise, on the highest ever weekly trading volume (over 14 million contracts at 1,000 barrels per contract = roughly the equivalent of 140 days’ worth of total global crude oil production traded on […]
March 7, 2026 | Tech Talk for Saturday March 7th 2026
The Bottom Line Start of the war against Iran had a significant negative impact on world equity markets last week. By the end of the week, intermediate term technicals for world equity markets had deteriorated from Overbought to Neutral levels. Despite international and political influences, analysts raised 2026 cash flow and earnings estimates for S&P […]
March 6, 2026 | Trump Holds a Weak Hand Heading into the Upcoming Summit
Trump Heads to Beijing With a Weak Hand When Donald Trump meets Xi Jinping in Beijing later this month, the setting will look like a diplomatic summit. But the real story is leverage—and right now China appears to have more of it. The three-day meeting comes as tensions rise over U.S. military action in Iran. […]
March 6, 2026 | Diversify This
The investment sales world loves to talk about the defensive benefit of holding different equity sectors and global markets. The pitch is that there’s always a bull market somewhere, so we can always-be-buying risk-on products. The US stock market is heavily concentrated (39%) in the top 10 most expensive companies today (dark blue bar below). […]
March 6, 2026 | Existing US Home Sales Collapse Despite Falling Mortgage Rates
Existing home sales just delivered one of the clearest signals yet about the true state of the housing market in 2026, and it is not the rebound narrative the mainstream keeps promoting. The latest data shows that existing-home sales fell 8.4% in January to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of just 3.91 million […]
March 5, 2026 | Europe Is Building a Digital Identity System for 450 Million People
The European Union is quietly constructing what may become one of the most sweeping digital identity systems ever attempted. Under new legislation, every EU member state must provide citizens with a government-approved “European Digital Identity Wallet” by 2026. This system will allow people to store official documents, verify identity, access government services, sign legal contracts, […]
March 4, 2026 | Great Nations Do Not Fight Endless Wars
“Great nations do not fight endless wars,” Donald Trump said during his campaign when highlighting his “Americas First” message. Trump explicitly promised to maintain peace and keep American troops out of foreign wars. American blood has been shed in the Middle East once more amid Operation Epic Fury. Could this escalating war cause MAGA […]
March 4, 2026 | Blocked Exits Intensify The Urge To Get Out
After the 2008 financial crisis, more than a decade of zero-interest-rate policies drove an explosion in private credit products and funds that were initially marketed to institutions and pensions under the oxymoron of safe ‘high-yield’. Then, from March 2022 to May 2023, a record succession of central bank rate hikes took the US Fed rate […]