November 2, 2024 | Trading Desk Notes for November 2, 2024
Bond yields have risen sharply since the Fed cut short rates on September 18. When the Fed cut rates in September, the 10-year yield was ~3.6%, an 18-month low. It was ~80 bps higher at 4.4% at Friday’s close. In October 2023, the yield was ~5%, a 16-year high. In this daily chart of the 10-year […]
November 2, 2024 | Trump Wins, Eliminates Federal Income Tax, Economy Booms – This is Important
Link to Interview. This was the Tax Reform Proposal for Congress in 1996. It set the stage for the abolishment of the Income Tax, the introduction of the Consumption Tax, and the restoration of the tax system prior to Marxism. The proposal in its entirety is provided here in PDF format, Parts 1 to […]
November 2, 2024 | Becoming Invisible, Part 15: Don’t Let Roomba See You Hide Your Gold
Yes, your new car tracks your location and records your conversations. Your smart speaker listens to and records your conversations. Your TV watches you while you watch it. Virtually every new device we install in our increasingly high-tech homes collects data and (at least potentially) sends it to criminals, corporations, and/or governments to use however they like. […]
November 2, 2024 | Tech Talk for Saturday November 2nd 2024
The Bottom Line Focus this week is on results from the U.S. election on November 5th. Consensus calls for a “dead heat” for election of the President and the House of Representative and a narrow win by the Republicans for the Senate. Chances are high that final results will not be determined this week. Multiple […]
November 1, 2024 | Britain in An Unprecedented Economic Decline into 2026
Aside from the collapse in Starmer’s popularity, he has confirmed our forecast for Britain. The left never saw someone they did not want to shake down for money. In the US, we have Trump talking about eliminating the income tax, which I worked on during the Nineties and even testified on taxation before the […]
November 1, 2024 | The Great Mortgage Reset in Canada will Hit Hard
Canadian policy makers are worried about potential weakness in the economy due to higher interest rates. One of the biggest challenges facing Canadians is the increase in monthly payments that comes with higher rates. Although there have been four Bank of Canada rate cuts this year, mortgage rates have not come down as much as […]
October 31, 2024 | Will the Next Pandemic Come Before World War III?
The US, Mexico, and Canada are developing a cohesive framework to prepare for the next pandemic. The North American Preparedness for Animal and Human Pandemics Initiative (NAPAHPI) “recognizes that the high degree of interconnectedness among our three countries of our critical infrastructure, supply chains, and societies means that disruptions affecting one country often impact the others.” […]
October 31, 2024 | Fourth Turning Election Igniting A Firestorm
“Imagine some national (and probably global) volcanic eruption, initially flowing along channels of distress that were created during the Unraveling era and further widened by the catalyst. Trying to foresee where the eruption will go once it bursts free of the channels is like trying to predict the exact fault line of an earthquake. All […]
October 30, 2024 | What’s The Right Amount To Bet at a Casino?
During the financial mania of 1634 to 1637, people bid up the price of tulip bulbs. At peak craziness, a “Semper Augustus” bulb sold for the equivalent value of a $14,000,000 mansion on the Amsterdam Grand Canal today. Then the fever broke, dragging bulbs and participants’ net worth back into the dirt. Today’s financial mania […]
October 30, 2024 | Trump’s Former Advisors Discuss How He Could End Ukraine War
Donald Trump has long stated that he would end the war in Ukraine if elected president. Confident in his ability to do so, the former president has stated he could end the conflict in 24 hours, and has guaranteed to do so before he actually enters the White House. He finally revealed how he […]
October 29, 2024 | Japan Providing Ukraine $3B in Stolen Russian Assets
Japan announced one of its largest aid packages to Ukraine to the tune of $3.09 billion (471.9 billion yen). The fund is merely part of the G7 scheme to use frozen Russian assets to finance the war. In total, the G7 is prepared to redistribute $50 billion in Russian assets to Ukraine. This plan will […]
October 29, 2024 | Art of the Collapse, November 2024
It’s official: Deepfakes have made it impossible to trust anything we see online: This is epic! pic.twitter.com/pCbVOcHXvQ — Dr. Clown, PhD (@DrClownPhD) October 24, 2024 Meanwhile, there’s an election where both sides expect to be robbed: Dad Decides It’s Time To Have ‘The Talk’ With Son About Rigged Elections (Babylon Bee) – Local dad Dave […]
October 28, 2024 | Rosenberg: Household Wealth at Extreme Risk
David Rosenberg, founder and president of Rosenberg Research & Associates Inc., joins Jack Farley on Monetary Matters to argue why a recession is likely to occur as soon as 2025. Rosenberg points to the low savings rate and argues that fiscal deficits and a stock market price bubble are boosting consumer spending and that this […]
October 28, 2024 | Heading to Zero
Happy Monday Morning! As expected, Macklem and Co slashed rates by 50bps this past week, citing slower growth and a softening labour market. Further adding, “if the economy evolves broadly in line with our latest forecast, we expect to reduce the policy rate further.” Remember that line, we’ll come back to it. So the Bank […]
October 28, 2024 | Broken China
Here in the US, people are obsessed with the impending election. It is perhaps the World’s Largest Guessing Game. We can look at polls and make our best guesses, but no one really knows what will happen. We just have to wait for more data which will (hopefully) be forthcoming November 5 or soon afterward. […]
October 27, 2024 | Is NATO Prepared for a Trump Victory?
People believe that NATO will simply back down if Donald Trump is re-elected as he is strongly against the war in Ukraine. This is simply not the case as NATO began planning for a Trump victory months ago. Chief Jens Stoltenberg attempted to created a 100 billion euro fund that was intended to be “Trump-proof” […]
October 27, 2024 | An Election Week Scenario
You can always tell when portfolio managers are hard at play, immersed in an epic circle jerk that has become more tediously familiar with each passing week. And so it went on Friday, as money migrated for no discernible reason from certain, temporarily disfavored stocks to flavor-of-the-day hotties. It seemed almost as though the chimpanzees […]
October 27, 2024 | Will a “Short Squeeze” Spike Silver?
The late, great Ted Butler spent the final decades of his life railing against the way the silver market was manipulated on the Comex and other exchanges while capitive regulators looked the other way. In very simple terms, he accused big banks, hedge funds, and commercial silver buyers of using futures contracts to suppress the […]
October 26, 2024 | Trading Desk Notes for October 26, 2024
US interest rates have surged higher since September 18, when the Fed cut short rates by 50 bps. US 2-year yields were near a 22-month low of ~3.63% on September 18 but closed this week at ~4.12%. In this chart of 2-year Treasury futures, the blue ellipse is September 18, and the black ellipse is October […]
October 26, 2024 | Tech Talk for Saturday October 26th 2024
The Bottom Line Key focuses this week are on third quarter results released by some of the largest U.S. companies including: Ford on Monday Alphabet, McDonalds and Pfizer on Tuesday Microsoft and Eli Lily on Wednesday Apple and Amazon on Thursday Exxon Mobil and Chevron on Friday Volatility in U.S. equity markets (measured by the […]
October 25, 2024 | A Jumbo Rate Cut and Worries About Deflation
The Bank of Canada made a jumbo rate cut, its fourth cut to the benchmark interest rate. The 50 basis points cut brought the policy rate to 3.75 percent. The justification for such a large cut is that CPI inflation has dropped below the target of 2 percent. The actual increase from a year ago […]
October 25, 2024 | Incrementum’s Latest Gold Charts
Incrementum is out with its latest In Gold We Trust chartbook, and to call it compelling for gold and silver would be to wildly understate the case. Here are a few of the highlights:
October 25, 2024 | Creating Your Best Future
Happy Friday! Keep Looking up! In this episode, my guest is Ari Wallach, most recently an adjunct associate professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and host of a new TV series titled A Brief History of the Future. We discuss the importance of learning to project our understanding of ourselves and […]
October 24, 2024 | Large US Inventory Build And Weaker Consumption Pull WTI Down Over US$1/b On The Day.
With less than two weeks left until the US elections the US stock market is gyrating and looks heavy to me. It is fighting the uncertainty of two different visions for America going forward and US interest rates have been climbing on the fears of inflation reigniting and debt crowding (too much borrowing for the […]
October 24, 2024 | Oversized Rate Cuts: Red Alert
Four easing cycles have seen the Bank of Canada deliver larger than 25 basis point rate cuts at a time: 2001, after the US dot-com bubble and Sept. 11 attacks; during the global financial crisis; in the COVID economic shock of 2020 (see chart on the left); and now, in 2024. See Bank of Canada’s Deeper Cut […]