ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR INVESTMENT PROFESSIONAL BEFORE MAKING ANY INVESTMENT DECISION
August 27, 2025 | TM: The Fed Now Fears Recession
Worthwhile overview in this discussion. Suddenly, the Federal Reserve is filled with more drama and curveballs than a World Series tiebreaker. The betting markets are abuzz debating who President Trump will replace current Chair Jerome Powell with. A surprise resignation from Fed governor and FOMC voting member Adriana Kugler has added Trump loyalist Stephen Mirran […]
August 26, 2025 | Weak Job Market Warning
It now takes the average US worker 24 weeks to find a job after losing one, nearly a month longer than a year ago, according to federal data. The hire rate—the number of hires as a share of overall U.S. employment—was just 3.3% in June, according to the Labour Department; below the 3.9% level in […]
August 24, 2025 | Danielle on CBC Weekend Business Panel
Here is a direct video link.
August 22, 2025 | AI Over-Exuberance Comparable To 2000 Internet-Inspired Bubble
A new MIT report concludes that 95% of generative artificial intelligence (AI) pilots are failing to translate into revenue growth: The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025, a new report published by MIT’s NANDA initiative, reveals that while generative AI holds promise for enterprises, most initiatives to drive rapid revenue growth are falling flat. Despite the rush to […]
August 21, 2025 | Pump and Dump Scams Are All The Rage (encore)
More cautionary signs of mania behaviour in financial markets, see “Investors lose billions on meme stocks as ‘pump and dump’ scams multiply“: Investors lost billions of dollars in July betting on a handful of small US-listed Chinese stocks that plunged in value shortly after being heavily promoted on social media. Seven Nasdaq-listed microcap stocks — Concorde […]
August 20, 2025 | Housing Demand at 30-Year Low
US homebuyer demand dropped again in June 2025 – with contract signings for houses declining 2.8% year-over-year to one of the lowest levels on record. At this point, homebuyer interest in the market is even lower than what was experienced in the depths of the 2008 housing crash. The question is: will we see a […]
August 19, 2025 | Self-Dealing Allows PE To Keep Marking Asset Values To Fantasy
As new outside investors become increasingly difficult to find, private equity firms are finding that often the best firm to sell their companies to is…themselves. Yep, you read that right. Private equity firms are increasingly keeping themselves afloat, extracting cash and boosting their fees through self-sold transactions. See: PEs Sell Firms to Themselves Twice Over to […]
August 18, 2025 | Would-Be-Sellers Dwarf Buyers in Many Markets
The housing unaffordability crisis is not just about current interest rates, which are historically average (4.71% 5-year fixed in Canada and 6.57% 30-year fixed in America). Homebuilders are already offering buy-down rates in the 3 percent range in the US and Canada. Still, new home sales have contracted year over year, while the inventory of […]
August 14, 2025 | Real Estate Downturn Picking up Steam
If we had a dime for all the times people say silly things, like “You’ll never lose money in real estate” or “high-end properties always hold their value.” Not true, never has been. The current real estate correction cycle is well-earned after years of easy money speculation and uneconomically high prices. Three years into the […]
August 13, 2025 | All’s Well That Ends Well
Margin debt (people borrowing against their security portfolios) has now topped $1 trillion for the first time in history, +25% over the past year alone. Other, lesser, margin-abuse peaks occurred before major bear markets/recessions (grey bars below) since 1995, courtesy of Rosenberg Research. Among professionals, dry powder is also in short supply. Trend-chasing portfolio manglers managers are all […]
August 11, 2025 | Housing Downturn is Bigger Economic Story Than Tariffs
As policymakers focus on tariffs, bursting real estate bubbles pose a significantly larger threat in terms of relative economic impact, and that’s now happening in several major economies simultaneously. Homes are the foundation of the household balance sheet and assets in the banking system. A 2025 Bank of Montreal report, “A Long Way Home”, concurs with our […]
August 7, 2025 | Liberation Day 2.0?
Last night at midnight, goods from more than 60 countries and the European Union became subject to tariff rates of 10% or higher. Products from the EU, Japan and South Korea are taxed at 15%, while imports from Taiwan, Vietnam and Bangladesh are taxed at 20%. See the full list of U.S tariffs in place around […]
August 5, 2025 | Collapse in Job Creation
Canada’s seasonally adjusted job vacancy rate fell to 2.7% in May, down 10 basis points (bps) from April and -50 bps year over year, reaching an 8-year low, significantly below pre-pandemic levels (red shown below since 2015, courtesy of BMO and Better Dwelling.com, with the US job opening rate in blue). Official unemployment rates are lagging indicators, […]
July 31, 2025 | Consumers Under Pressure Across The Spectrum
As the US and Canadian central banks declined to offer monetary easing yesterday, consumer confidence measures are already below the levels recorded in the past nine recessions, including the periods surrounding 9/11, the 2008 financial crisis, and the 2020 pandemic. A raft of recent data shows households under increasing financial stress across all income levels. […]
July 29, 2025 | Financial Sobriety is a Rare Superpower Over Time
Speculative trading indicators measure froth in financial markets and indicate when speculators—rather than fundamental investors—are dominating market behavior. As shown below, since 1995, the rebound in speculative measures over the past three months has been one of the sharpest on record, and in rare company with now infamous bubble tops in 1999-2000 and 2021. The […]
July 28, 2025 | Hoisington Q2 2025 Review and Outlook
Hoisington Management’s 2025 Second Quarter Review and Outlook is available here. At his June 18 press conference, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell referred to tariffs as inflationary. Hoisington points out that this is only the first-round effect: Second, third, and later-round effects also come into play, causing the quantity demanded and price to decrease for the […]
July 24, 2025 | Klarman on Finding Value and Maintaining Discipline
A world focused on selling us investment products and ideas spends little time defining sell or aversion rules. If someone tells you what they own or would buy, ask them when they would sell it. Most haven’t thought that far; they ride price cycles up and down with no plan to protect capital from drawdowns. […]
July 23, 2025 | Meme-Stock Craze, Season Two
The 2023–2024 rate hikes and bear market wipeouts tamped down rampant retail speculation. But in 2025, rate cut expectations, along with AI-inspired price rebounds year to date, have reignited animal spirits. ChatGPT astutely observes that “Day trading’s resurgence may also reflect disillusionment with traditional investing timelines and frustration with affordability/inflation.” In other words, the masses are […]
July 21, 2025 | Grantham: Don’t Be Conned By Those Selling Shovels In The Gold Rush
The Next Twelve Months Price-to-Earnings ratio (NTM P/E, shown below courtesy of ISABELNET) is one of the historically relevant forward-looking valuation metrics that compares a company’s current share price to its projected earnings over the next 12 months. Today’s sky-high US equity valuations, highlighted in dark blue, are comparable only to the rare, infamous peaks of […]
July 17, 2025 | Staying Focused Through Noise
In a series of heart-stopping swings, since mid-December, the tech-heavy S&P 500 and Nasdaq are currently up 2.9% and 2.7%, respectively, while the US dollar (as measured by the DXY) has fallen 10% against major trading partners. The more economically sensitive Dow Jones Index is down 2% since December, while the S&P 600 (small-cap companies) […]
July 16, 2025 | Downcycles Bring Opportunity For Those Who Can Resist Consensus Views
Toronto home sales rose 8.1% in June, but were still 35% below the decade’s average; the average home sale price dropped 5.2% year-over-year to $1,151,600. Condo sales in Toronto have declined by 75% over the past three years (-37% in Vancouver) and are down 22% from June 2024; at the same time, new listings are […]
July 14, 2025 | The Great Unraveling Brings Pain and Remorse
If we had a loonie for every person who believed, “You can never lose money in real estate.” Unfortunately, many well-meaning older folks ignorantly aided and abetted younger folks into a massive housing bubble. Many are doing the same thing now with corporate securities markets back at historic highs. The masses are increasingly realizing and regretting capital […]
July 11, 2025 | Paid To Look The Other Way
Timeless perspective is offered in this segment…the more things stay the same. In this episode of The Real Eisman Playbook, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gretchen Morgenson discusses her career in investigative journalism, focusing on the dark side of Wall Street, the AIG scandal, and the financial crisis. She highlights the role of private equity in modern […]
July 9, 2025 | Macro Updates for Dog Days of Summer 2025
Economist Lacy Hunt offers a sobering look at the long-term economic forces shaping the U.S. outlook—and why inflation might already be in retreat, even as the Federal Reserve stays cautious. He argues that we’re in the midst of a disinflationary trend driven by excessive debt, declining velocity of money, and the structural weakening of global […]
July 8, 2025 | Mindless Flows are Not Loss Protection
Vanguard founder and ETF pioneer, Jack Bogle, warned that if index funds came to own half of the U.S. stock market, it could lead to significant issues, like too much influence concentrated in just a few institutional owners, which he believed would be “a problem” for corporate governance and overall market function. According to the […]