Thoughts from the Front Line - If you are an investor, an economist, or really anyone who watches big trends, numbers are your friends. They help you understand events you can’t personally observe. Like human friends, numbers aren’t perfect. Sometimes they mislead you, even when they don’t mean to. At other times they’re just wrong. Maybe they mean well but don’t […]

Thoughts from the Front Line - Last week I compared our jobs data, which is sometimes questionable, to World War II weather forecasts. Those were also questionable but necessary anyway. The generals needed them “for planning purposes.” This analogy has a flaw, though. A forecast for future weather isn’t the same as data on past weather. The data—wind speed, barometric pressure, and so on—is the […]

Thoughts from the Front Line - I remember when August was a slow month. School didn’t start until after Labor Day. Even in my adult days in the investment world, not much happened. People were either on vacation or coming back and getting ready for September. It’s hard to believe, but nobody really cared about Jackson Hole in the ’80s or […]

Thoughts from the Front Line - I am widely known as the “Muddle Through” guy. The giant US economy is part of an even larger global economy that doesn’t change direction easily. Major shifts occur slowly, even when presidents, central bankers, and CEOs want otherwise. They don’t have nearly as much power as they may think. That said, these people do […]

Thoughts from the Front Line - Many people yearn for a simpler life. Ironically, that’s the one thing we’re almost guaranteed not to get. Technology keeps shifting the ground beneath us, mostly for the better, but also creates complications for businesses and individuals. The rules, especially from the government, seem to keep shifting, too. Everything around us just gets more and […]

Thoughts from the Front Line - If you listen to the media—both MSM and social media—it seems like everyone in the world wants lower interest rates. Historically low rates were the landscape for most of the last 15 years, and anyone who borrowed money enjoyed it. Savers, not so much, but the idea of going back to low mortgage rates, bank […]

Thoughts from the Front Line - We like to say markets don’t lie. That may be so, but they can certainly send mixed signals. It happened last week when President Trump announced tariff rates on several important trade partners not so different from the ones he set back in April. Back then, stocks swooned, the dollar cratered, and bond yields soared. […]

Thoughts from the Front Line - Happy Fourth of July! I hope you’re enjoying a long holiday weekend. That’s what I am doing, so this letter will be a little different. But first, this is a very special Fourth of July. It is the beginning of a year-long celebration of the 250th anniversary of signing the Declaration of Independence. And truly, we […]

Thoughts from the Front Line - Today we’ll talk again about the SIC—not the Strategic Investment Conference, but the Strategic Investment Conclusions it helped us reach. This is not a recap of the conference. It’s my reflection on some things I think we should practice in our lives and our investment portfolio management. The “strategic” part means we don’t seek information for its […]

Thoughts from the Front Line - One cannot overstate the importance of Claude Shannon and his 1940s work on information theory at Bell Labs. It was foundational to modern telecommunications and electronics. We’ve seen constant improvement in our ability to communicate because we can separate the important information from the noise. Those of us of a certain age can remember trying […]

Thoughts from the Front Line - “We desperately as a country want to destroy more jobs. That is the only good outcome in the next 10 years…” Joe Lonsdale, Venture Capitalist and SIC speaker (Joe is right, but it is critical you understand why he is right if you want to understand the future. -JM) “The answer to the question “Where […]

Thoughts from the Front Line - I call our annual event the Strategic Investment Conference for a reason. Understanding the macro trends is only the first step. We all have to apply that knowledge in our own portfolios so we can tolerate short-term fluctuations and achieve our bigger goals. Today I’m going to highlight some speakers who added an equity market perspective to […]

Thoughts from the Front Line - The Strategic Investment Conference is over. I’m now in my annual recovery period, during which I try to absorb the informational firehose I (with thousands of others) just experienced. I often find SIC’s key insights come from unexpected directions. I spend months organizing the agenda in what I think is a comprehensible way. But once […]

Thoughts from the Front Line - We are in the middle of the Strategic Investment Conference, a fabulous gathering of some of the best economic, political, and geopolitical minds anywhere. I’m really proud of what we’re doing. And at the last minute, we’ve added Dr. Mehmet Oz, nationally regarded cardiovascular surgeon, author of numerous best-selling books with my friend Dr. Mike […]

Thoughts from the Front Line - I’ve been writing about tariffs for a couple of months now, focusing mostly on the macroeconomic harm and the costs they impose on small businesses. Today I want to consider something else: the new risks they are adding to the financial system alongside the old risks. We had a small taste of it when markets […]

Thoughts from the Front Line - Economic data can be soft or hard. “Soft” data reflects attitudes, expectations, opinions, and feelings. It’s a step removed from the “hard” data reflecting actual events. Soft data is still valuable because future expectations shape the hard data that follows. Looking at the most recent soft data, I found myself consulting the thesaurus for a […]

Thoughts from the Front Line - In some kinds of surgery, it is necessary to keep the patient extremely still because even small, involuntary movements can cause damage. Anesthesiologists administer “paralytic” drugs so the surgeons can do their work safely. Thus, a condition we would normally dread actually helps restore us to health. Tariffs can have a similar effect on the […]

Thoughts from the Front Line - Markets don’t like uncertainty. It is a cliché, but for a very good reason. It is more than a truism. In fact, businesses don’t like uncertainty. You and I don’t like uncertainty in our personal lives. When we go to the store, we want to be certain that what we are looking for is there, […]

Thoughts from the Front Line - You probably noticed we are having one of those “weeks when decades happen.” Notice also, however, that we are still here. Your investments and businesses may be bruised but you’re still in the game. Fast-moving events are hard to cover in my letters. Anything I say could be rendered laughably wrong by the time you […]

Thoughts from the Front Line - Good news: Tariffs will not make the world end. American businesses will do what they do best, which is adapt. While the probability of a recession has increased, we always get through it and the best businesses thrive. Unless directly affected by tariffs, don’t change your personal plans that much. Much of this may change […]

Thoughts from the Front Line - Financial market news has seemingly become all tariffs, all the time. The president’s plan, whatever it is, seems to spring from his belief that trade deficits are bad and must be eliminated. Tariffs are just a means to that end. I have a somewhat different view. I think the US trade deficit, in itself, is […]

Thoughts from the Front Line - The theme among so many writers seems to be “vibe shift.” And indeed, there is a concern the economy is slowing and may even be in a recession. That is certainly what today’s writer and my friend, Danielle DiMartino Booth, points to in this second part of her data-driven inflation analysis, which I share below. […]

Thoughts from the Front Line - Last week we published a chart of the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model, which had just dropped sharply to a -2.4% real GDP growth forecast for the first quarter of 2025. This model can be volatile. Its latest big swing was mostly an artifact of spiking gold imports. Economic growth prospects do seem to have dimmed […]

Thoughts from the Front Line - “Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” —Yale economist Irving Fisher 12 days before Black Monday in October 1929 “Wall Street indexes predicted nine out of the last five recessions!” —MIT professor Paul Samuelson in 1966 Last week, we explored the Crestmont Stock Market Matrix and its insight into the drivers of stock […]

Thoughts from the Front Line - Bull’s Eye Investing was published on January 1, 2004. It quickly became a bestseller. The main thing that people still ask me about was a trifold spread color chart of stock market returns since 1900. Returns were color-coded so readers could see the ebb and flow of returns over time. That remarkable representation of market performance […]