ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR INVESTMENT PROFESSIONAL BEFORE MAKING ANY INVESTMENT DECISION
May 11, 2025 | Britain Steps Back From the Brink
The UK, like much of the rest of Europe, has been committing slow-motion cultural suicide in recent years. By piling up unsustainable debts, deindustrialising in pursuit of “net zero” fantasies, atomising into multiple incompatible subcultures via unconstrained immigration, and persecuting citizens for tweets and other previously accepted forms of dissent, the former liberal democracy had […]
May 11, 2025 | Trump Magic Losing Its Hold on Investors
[The S&Ps are losing steam after recouping two-thirds of their 1400-point loss in March/April. The stall near 5700 has left them hovering in the danger zone, just like the U.S. economy. Will it skirt recession? I have my doubts, even if price action on the S&P chart on April 7 led me to speculate that […]
May 11, 2025 | Tension in the Sandpile
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 […]
May 11, 2025 | Germany’s Conspiracy Theory Hotline
Germany has become increasingly tyrannical in its fight to combat dissenters who do not believe in abandoning nationalism for Brussels. Not only does the German government want to banish political parties who dissent from its narrative, but it has implemented a hotline where citizens may report others who spread “disinformation” and “conspiracy theories.” The Violence […]
May 10, 2025 | Trading Desk Notes for May 10, 2025
Is a long-term rotation out of US assets beginning? The S&P hit all-time highs in February (Trump’s new Golden Era would be American exceptionalism on steroids), then trended lower into early April, down ~9%. Following “Liberation Day” and subsequent “tariff bluster” (which led to tariffs on China of 145%), the S&P plunged to 15-month lows on April […]
May 10, 2025 | Inflation the Real Story
QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong, a friend of mine attends your conferences and said you’re the only person who understands the economy because you have international experience and have met with many central banks around the world. He said inflation is no longer the simplistic expansion of the money supply, and anyone who said that is still […]
May 10, 2025 | Tech Talk for Saturday May 10th 2025
The Bottom Line Focus this week is on U.S. inflation. Consensus for April CPI and April PPI calls for rising rates that likely will dampen trader enthusiasm. Consensus for Earnings and Revenues for S&P 500 companies Analyst estimates for earnings gains for the first quarter of 2025 increased again last week after reported results exceeded […]
May 9, 2025 | Warren Buffett Announces His Retirement
On Saturday, May 3 at a meeting with Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, Warren Buffett shocked the investing world in announcing his retirement as Chief Executive Officer at the end of 2025. Buffett will stay on as Chairman of the board and his replacement will be Edmonton native and current manager of Berkshire’s non-insurance businesses, Greg Abel. […]
May 8, 2025 | President Trump’s Proposal to Eliminate Income Taxes: Can It Be Done?
In February, President Trump said that tariffs would generate so much income that Americans would no longer need to pay income taxes. The latest plan, according to U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, is to abolish income taxes for people who earn less than $150,000 yearly. That move would affect roughly 75% of workers, according to U.S. […]
May 8, 2025 | Canada Attempts to Loosens Reliance on US Trade
Canadian exports to the United States are beginning to decrease in light of the trade war. Statistics Canada announced that exports to the United States, Canada’s largest trading partner, declined 6.6% during the first month of tariffs while imports from the United States fell 2.9%. March 2025 was the second-highest recorded monthly increase in non-US […]
May 8, 2025 | Fed Sits Tight as Economic Hits Keep Coming
Yesterday, the US Federal Reserve held its policy rate steady at 4.25%–4.50%, as Chair Jerome Powell admitted he doesn’t know whether rising inflation or surging unemployment will hit hardest. In the meantime, indebted businesses and consumers feel the pressure of interest rates near multi-decade highs. A larger share of student loan balances are past due […]
May 7, 2025 | California Loses Another Oil Refinery – Gas Prices to Rise 75% by 2026
Oil refinery Valero has opted to close its operations in California due to excessive regulations on energy. Located in the small city of Benicia, the town is expected to lose 400 jobs, which the mayor is calling the exit “a major hit on the city.” Everyone in California is feeling the impact of Newsom’s war […]
May 7, 2025 | Trade-War Pain Spreading
China’s economy showed signs of damage from the trade war in April, with a drop in export orders and the weakest production at the country’s factories in more than a year. See, Beijing doesn’t want America to see its trade war pain Here is a direct video link. The impacts are evident in America, too. Port of […]
May 7, 2025 | Next Stock Market Decline To Set Up Bargain Window For Energy Stocks
Trump Tariffs are getting the most attention for deals (White House optimism) with 15 countries before the end of the 90 day window and no deals have yet come to fruition. Japan and Korea were expected to be first but changes in the political leadership in each country is delaying any deals. This would be painful […]
May 6, 2025 | Wuhan Virology Lab Continues Gain-of-Function Research on Coronaviruses
(The Wuhan Institute of Virology) America will no longer fund gain-of-research studies, thanks to an executive order implemented by Donald Trump that “will drastically reduce the potential for lab-related incidents involving gain-of-function research, like that conducted on bat coronaviruses in China by the EcoHealth Alliance and Wuhan Institute of Virology.” As a reminder, the Wuhan […]
May 6, 2025 | Lacy Hunt: Five Recessionary Forces
Dr. Lacy Hunt, Chief Economist at Hoisington Investment Management, analyzes what he calls an economic “interregnum” where five convergent forces are aligning to depress growth. Dr. Hunt methodically explains how tariffs will ultimately prove deflationary rather than inflationary, why the Fed’s restrictive monetary policy is misplaced, how federal spending cuts are creating headwinds, why massive […]
May 5, 2025 | Amish Win Battle Against Canadian Govt Over COVID Regulations
The Amish had an extremely low rate of COVID infections, as well as for most diseases that infect modern societies. Regardless, the Canadian government is continuing to harass this community for failing to abide by COVID-era regulations. In particular, the Canadian government is demanding that the Amish community pay for non-compliance with the federal […]
May 5, 2025 | Affordability Cometh
Happy Monday Morning! Mark Carney is in. The Liberal government was granted a fourth term in power and will have their work cut out for them as the economy circles the drain. Housing, in particular, is in a rather precarious spot. As we’ve highlighted at length in this newsletter, housing starts are crumbling. Source: RBC […]
May 5, 2025 | Black Swans: What If Bad People Get Next-Level AI?
This is the first in a series of “heads up” posts on things that might go very wrong very fast, and how to prepare for them. An obvious place to begin is AGI: The global race to develop ever-smarter AIs has an interim goal called Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), which refers to a system capable […]
May 5, 2025 | Cash-Strapped Investors Borrowing Against Illiquid Funds
During the highly unnatural, central bank-imposed years of ZIRP ‘zero interest rate policy’, investors were increasingly attracted to ‘alternative’ illiquid, opaque, securities that did not mark to market and promised future payouts premised on an endless supply of greater fools who would buy off existing holders. Some funds have been marketing theoretical return data, not […]
May 4, 2025 | Soft Data Gets Softer
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 […]
May 4, 2025 | Four Weeks Off Bottom, Stocks Enter ‘Danger Zone’
[We are coming up on a month since I blew ‘Taps’ for a bear market that supposedly was just starting. There was panic in the air that Sunday because America’s enemies in Brussels were dumping T-Bonds in an attempt to crash the market. They were intent on forcing Powell to ease, but their plan failed […]
May 4, 2025 | Semi-Automatic Weapons Ban
Democrats are continuing their plight to abolish the Second Amendment. “You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass,” is a famous quote misattributed to Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto during the last World War. Yet, our right to bear arms certainly keeps us safe from predators both […]
May 3, 2025 | If Trump Does Not Wake UP – The EU will Invoke Article 5 and Take us into WWIII
QUESTION: Do you agree with Trump imposing more sanctions on Russia to force peace? VB ANSWER: Absolutely no way. This is a stupid move, and it demonstrates to me that either Trump is not being fed the real intel, or he is being reckless. There is no way Putin should sign any peace deal with Ukraine when […]
May 3, 2025 | Trading Desk Notes for May 3, 2025
The 180-degree turn in market sentiment from bearish to bullish has been sustained, powering the S&P higher for nine consecutive days The S&P was down ~22% at the April 7 lows (blue ellipse) following “Liberation Day” and subsequent tariff escalations. Two days later, Trump “paused” many of the tariffs to allow for “trade deals” to be […]