Juggling Dynamite - History offers valuable perspective on human systems and cycles. Political leadership is easy to criticize and hard to do. Pendulums swing, and so it goes. Revisit decades past in Canadian politics as prime ministers came and went and oversight of the country changed hands. Here is a direct video link.

Juggling Dynamite - Risk complacency is evident in exuberantly priced assets. Stocks do not provide contractually prescribed interest payments or a return of principal date. Some pay dividends, but these are always at the discretion of corporate management and can and should be cut when a company’s financial circumstances warrant it. When a company becomes insolvent, creditors and […]

Juggling Dynamite - Many moving parts are pulling in opposite directions. This discussion highlights some big ones. 2025 ushers in one of the most dangerous periods in world history — on par with the 1930s and early Cold War, says Ian Bremmer, president and founder of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media. Highlighting the top geopolitical risks for the […]

Juggling Dynamite - Canada’s unemployment rate rose to 6.9% in December, now up 210 basis points (bps) from the 4.8% low in June 2022 (below in blue). The U.S. unemployment rate, at 4.2%, has risen 80 bps since it bottomed in April 2023. There has never been a time when unemployment has increased this much outside of recessions.Moreover, […]

Juggling Dynamite - Asset bubbles create unproductive debt and uneconomic pricing, which magnifies financial trauma as prices reverse.  Most Canadians now live in cities where the average home price is five to twelve times the average household income (shown below, courtesy of WOWA.ca). The long-term ‘affordable’ norm was three times, max. This reality increases financial vulnerability for households, […]

Juggling Dynamite - A massive population followed by 36 years of a one-child policy (1980 to 2016) magnified the demographic strains building in China. Still, similar generational flashpoints are growing in most developed countries today. Compromise, fresh thinking and more efficiency/less waste are necessary. China’s pension system is in danger of running out of money in a decade. […]

Juggling Dynamite - Home builders across America like Lennar and DR Horton are issuing massive warnings about the US Housing Market in 2025. Most recently, Lennar signaled a big decline in revenue YoY and a huge pile-up of homes for sale. Housing markets like Florida, Texas, and Arizona are most in the cross-hairs of this home-builder downturn. Access […]

Juggling Dynamite - It is no secret that population dynamics significantly impact global stability. But what’s really behind today’s shifting global birth trends, the increased need for medically-assisted pregnancy, and the changing age demographics of industrialized nations? Furthermore, what are the implications of these shifts for future economic security? Today, Nate is joined by investment strategist Jeremy Grantham […]

Juggling Dynamite - There are many clear-eyed insights in this segment. Danielle DiMartino Booth, CEO and chief strategist of QI Research and former Federal Reserve insider, joins the Julia La Roche Show for an in-person interview to discuss why she sees “frayed nerves” at the Federal Reserve about the incoming Trump administration. In this wide-ranging conversation, DiMartino Booth […]

Juggling Dynamite - As 2024 draws to a close, the mood on Wall Street is very jolly. Stocks are back to trading near all-time highs. Positive sentiment — be it among investors, businesses or consumers — is suddenly spiking. Is such exuberance merited? Should we expect the market’s good times to continue rolling in 2025? Or, is the […]

Juggling Dynamite - Canada’s economy is slumping, along with support for the federal government. So far, the Bank of Canada says it plans to ease policy rates at a slower pace in 2025. The Treasury market is not convinced. Through fits and starts, government bond prices have continued to rise on safety-seeking inflows (yields in a downtrend). The […]

Juggling Dynamite - Today on the Jay Martin Show, Jay sits down with Danielle DiMartino Booth, CEO of QI Intelligence and author of Fed Up. the pair dissect critical economic and geopolitical trends shaping today’s markets. They explore the historic overvaluation of the stock market, rising consumer debt, and the hidden vulnerabilities in the gig economy. Danielle offers […]

Juggling Dynamite - A house on our street recently sold for $8 million to a buyer in his early 40s. Our mutual tradesperson had the scoop: the guy made his money in Bitcoin. This is his summer house; he lives in Hawaii. On closing, he installed lifts in the garage, stacked them with exotic cars, and put a […]

Juggling Dynamite - Twenty-four years ago, I was studying to become a financial analyst while working at a stock brokerage. Equity markets and animal spirits were soaring; the Nasdaq doubled in 1999 alone. Nortel was Canada’s pride and joy, accounting for over a third of Canada’s TSX stock index. In September 2000, Nortel was trading at C$124 a […]

Juggling Dynamite - I regularly hear about people thinking of selling their Florida real estate due to escalating costs. An aged population increasingly feels the same way, and the weak loonie is a final catalyst for many Canadians. Who will be willing to buy from all those looking to sell? After the deadly Florida condominium collapse in Surfside […]

Juggling Dynamite - Canada’s Venture Composite Index (a basket of economically sensitive micro-cap companies, 44% weighted in materials, 30% information technology, 15.74% in energy, 3.5% health care, 2.48% financials, 1.85% industrials, .58% communication services, and .32% consumer discretionary) appears to concur with former BoC head Stephen Poloz’s recessionary assessment. When the real economy expands, rising demand for commodities […]

Juggling Dynamite - Some 1.2 million Canadian mortgages are set to renew in 2025. In 2021, those taken out with 3—to 5-year terms had an average interest rate of 2.05%. Today, even after 125 basis points of overnight rate cuts from the Bank of Canada, the average fixed rate on offer with a 20% downpayment is 4.39 to […]

Juggling Dynamite - U.S. president-elect Donald Trump and his incoming border czar claim their country’s northern border with Canada is a threat to national security. Andrew Chang breaks down the basis of the claims about drugs and illegal migrants streaming into the country from Canada, and to what extent they’re true. Here is a direct video link. 

Juggling Dynamite - This morning, we learned that Canada’s unemployment rate rose to 6.8% in November, the highest since September 2021 and January 2017. It is now up 200 basis points (bps) from the cycle low of 4.8% in June 2022 and has never increased this much outside of a recession. Of the 50,000 new jobs created, 45,000 […]

Juggling Dynamite - There are many wise, helpful insights in this discussion. In this episode, my guest is Morgan Housel, an expert in private wealth generation and management and author of the bestselling book The Psychology of Money. We discuss how desiring, pursuing, saving, and spending money impact our psychology and perception of wealth. We explore why people […]

Juggling Dynamite - The Canadian government’s plan to constrain population growth by reducing immigration over the next few years is designed to relieve demand pressure on key services like housing, education and health care. That’s needed. The downsides are that Canada’s economic growth will weaken, and the government will collect less revenue. RBC economists estimate the impact to be about […]

Juggling Dynamite - About 15 million, or 37% of Canada’s 40 million people, live in the Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal areas, three of the top seven least affordable cities in America and Canada. Over 25% live in the two least affordable cities—Vancouver and Toronto—where the average sale price in 2024 was 12.7x and 10.7x the median household incomes […]

Juggling Dynamite - Is the U.S. in the heat of a recession right now? A recent jump in bankruptcies resembles that of the Great Financial Crisis, Danielle DiMartino Booth, CEO and Chief Strategist for QI Research, tells Jeremy Szafron, Kitco News anchor, on the sidelines of the New Orleans Investment Conference. Booth discusses a range of topics, including […]

Juggling Dynamite - The S&P 500 (26% concentrated in the five most expensive tech companies) is trading at 38x smoothed 10-year earnings, just marginally below the all-time high of 43x briefly seen at the 2000 tech bubble top and much higher than the previous bubble top in 1929 (Shiller PE ratio below since 1870). But then, most are […]

Juggling Dynamite - About that Trump trade… The last time today’s expert was on the program back in July, she was concerned about rising unemployment. Is she still as worried about it as we prepare to enter a new year with a new Administration taking over? To find out, we have the good fortune to talk today with […]