ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR INVESTMENT PROFESSIONAL BEFORE MAKING ANY INVESTMENT DECISION
October 31, 2017 | Would Higher Interest Rates Derail Today’s Housing Boom?
A key question for investors, including those who participate in real estate markets, is: “Where are interest rates headed?” There is a great deal of speculation about who President Trump’s pick for the next Fed chair is going to be – and he recently confirmed that he is “close to deciding. ” At a Capitol […]
October 31, 2017 | Spooky
On Halloween it’s okay to pretend you’re someone else. What a relief that must be to most little beavers whose real lives are pooched. Tell me, how did we get to be so educated, and still be so dumb? “My sister and new husband, 28 and 31 years years old, are both full time teachers,” […]
October 31, 2017 | Jump in Consumer Spending is Transitory, Price Deflation Coming Up
The Fed meets today and Fed Chair Janet Yellen will make another superficial statement of some sort. Most likely, she will reiterate some mush about transitory low inflation while noting a surge in consumer spending. It’s the jump in consumer spending that’s likely to be transitory. Target practice Image from MarketWatch The Wall Street Journal […]
October 31, 2017 | The Real Math of Equity Allocations
Secular bears are born from extended periods of indiscriminate buying and speculation that drive prices paid for securities to irrational multiples of real world items like revenues, cyclically adjusted earnings, tangible assets and wages. And then they mean revert. Bulls say buying and holding at any price is smart investing, because ‘over the long-run’ market […]
October 31, 2017 | Hawks Unleashed Could Rock the Markets
The chief hawk in this narrative is Stanford Economics Professor John Taylor (JT); aka the creator of the Taylor Rule for monetary policy. Should President. Trump pull a surprise out of his hat this week (Would it be a surprise if President Trump didn’t surprise?), and appoints JT head of the US Federal Reserve Bank […]
October 31, 2017 | Pressure to Perform, Quarter After Quarter
“If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.” —Warren Buffett Investors are in the midst of sifting through quarterly earnings and future guidance reports. Accordingly, let’s revisit one common task of reporting companies. That is, the constant need to deliver at least expected results, if not better-than-expected results. Quarter, after quarter, after quarter! Analyst […]
October 31, 2017 | NY Attack, JFK Files, Las Vegas, Hillary and Uranium
- Michael Rivero – MSM, Special Counsels, Pedos, Drones, Opiods and the Petro-Yuan
October 31, 2017 | More Trick Than Treat
Gold continued to struggle this month. Sentiment in the gold space has been poor too. I think the main culprit is the complete lack of risk aversion. I’ve seen plenty of commentary lately about the USD doing damage to the gold price but that doesn’t seem like much of an argument when you look at […]
October 31, 2017 | Business Worried BC NDP Adopting Disastrous 90’s Labour Policies
- Jordan Bateman – Will businesses destroyed by BC wildfires get adequate government support?
October 31, 2017 | Housing Slowdown Takes Chunk out of Canadian Economy
Most “Home Buying Guides” Misleading, Harmful to Buyer
October 31, 2017 | Oil Higher as Russia and Saudi’s Discuss Continued Production Cuts
Brewers Combining with “Real” Bud Producers
October 30, 2017 | China’s Copper Tsunami
Man, the S&P 500 is on a roll. It’s up 14.2% this year so far. But you know what’s doing even better? Copper! Just look at this chart. Copper’s up 27% so far this year. Wow! Prices are up because demand for copper is red-hot. And global copper demand is led by China. China’s copper […]
October 30, 2017 | Mario Draghi – Europe’s ‘agent’ of the Deep State!
Mario Draghi is due to leave the European Central Bank in October 2019 Mario Draghi will likely go his whole eight year tenure at the helm of the European Central Bank without ever having raised interest rates, money market pricing suggests. The ECB this week extended its landmark bond-buying stimulus programme until at least September 2018, […]
October 30, 2017 | When Did Americans Become the Bad Guys?
I found my thrill On Blueberry Hill On Blueberry Hill When I found you The moon stood still On Blueberry Hill And lingered until My dream came true – “Blueberry Hill,” Fats Domino PARIS – Fats Domino died last week. RIP. Everything changes. A generation gives way. A new one takes over. The moon doesn’t […]
October 30, 2017 | The Wait
When I was twentysomething, before there was Google, proper underwear or safe food and LBJ was napalming jungles, nobody my age trusted the government. Politicians started wars, rewarded cronies, were remote and unaccountable. They deserved to be protested against. So we did. I was even in a riot once. Thrilling. Today the kids seem to […]
October 30, 2017 | Idiots Who Try to Control the World and Blame Everyone Else for their Failure
COMMENT: Ok Mr. Armstrong, this is nuts; You are starting to freak me out with this forecasting. The last 2 months has blown me away when a few more elements of your methodology lit my bulb a little brighter. This may sound like you paid me to advertise for you but most of us know you’re […]
October 30, 2017 | Fragmenting Countries, Part 1: Catalonia Is Just The Beginning
Picture a life where you do most of your shopping through Amazon.com and the local farmers’ market, most of your communicating through Facebook and Instagram, much of your travel via Uber, and much of your saving and transacting with bitcoin, gold and silver. Do you really need an immense, distant, and rapacious central government? Maybe […]
October 30, 2017 | Consumers Tap Savings to Spend at Fastest Pace Since 2009: Real Income Drops, Core Inflation Slight
In the wake of the hurricanes, consumers tapped savings to spend at the fastest paces since August 2009. Core PCE inflation (not counting food and energy) was 0.1% but overall PCE inflation was 0.4%. The savings rate is the lowest since 2008. The BEA’s Personal Income and Outlays report for September shows: Personal income increased […]
October 30, 2017 | Canada in for a Rough Patch Even if Rates Stay Low for a Long Time
The Loonie is tumbling and Canadian bonds rallying as the Bank of Canada backs away from its rate hiking plans in ‘surprise’ over the slowing Canadian economy. Meanwhile a new report from the National Energy Board brings good news for the planet (that is bad for Canadian GDP in the short and medium run). See: Canada’s […]
October 29, 2017 | GREXIT – Will Greece be Better off or Worse?
QUESTION: I just read an article about Grexit and the MoU that expires in the summer of 2018. Let’s assume Greece exits EU and the Euro, what would happen to Greece and it’s people? What hardships would Grexit bring to the Greek people and what could individual Greeks do to prepare themselves for these hardships? Thanks […]
October 29, 2017 | Senate Makes It Harder For Americans to Sue Banks
Hang on to your hats, folks. I know you’re going to have a hard time believing this one. Are you ready? (You might need to sit down for this). OK, brace yourself: the US Senate just made it harder for Americans to sue banks. I know, I know. I can hardly believe it either. But […]
October 29, 2017 | This Permabear Is Still Quite Bullish
AMZN, our most important stock-market bellwether, topped on Friday just 36 cents from an ostensibly important rally target I’d sent out to subscribers the night before. Much as I’d like to enthuse about the possibility that this will mark an important top in the broad averages, I’ve dispensed with the usual hubris to focus instead […]
October 29, 2017 | Do It
When the feds proposed whacking the self-employed with a menu of tax hits over the summer, lots of people cheered. Many were here. The comment section, way down in the hold with the rats and spiders, exploded with anti-entrepreneur, anti-doctor, anti-small biz emotion. Overwhelmingly the sentiment was that regular working, ‘honest’, salaried deplorables can’t deduct […]
October 29, 2017 | United Nations of Debt: Visualizing $63 Trillion in Global Debt by Country
Jeff Desjardins, the Visual Capitalist posted a nice chart of global debt on his website on Friday. I added lines in blue to group the Eurozone countries for comparison purposes. Poland is not on the Euro, but rather the Zloty. Clean boundaries were visually difficult in a single shape. US is the leader in global […]
October 29, 2017 | Bull in a China Shop
“So the modern world may be increasing in technological knowledge, but, paradoxically, it is making things a lot more unpredictable.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder “Success brings an asymmetry: you now have a lot more to lose than to gain. You are hence fragile.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things […]