ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR INVESTMENT PROFESSIONAL BEFORE MAKING ANY INVESTMENT DECISION
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 […]
May 3, 2025 | Tech Talk for Saturday May 3rd 2025
The Bottom Line Sell in May and go away? History of the Dow Jones Industrial Average during Post Presidential Election Years since 1950 (e.g. 2025) shows a shallow period of weakness from mid-May to th end of September (including a brief summer rally to the end of July). Average drop during the period was 2.0%
May 2, 2025 | Mark Carney Faces His Biggest Challenge
Prime Minister Mark Carney will meet President Donald Trump soon to try to convince him to amend or remove the punishing tariffs that he has imposed on Canada. Will Mark Carney succeed in building a mutually beneficial relationship between these two close allies? Carney has a long history of leadership with Goldman Sachs, the Bank […]
May 2, 2025 | Markets Rallying Into Resistance
Market Summary – May 1, 2025 US stocks extended their rally Thursday: S&P 500 rose 0.6% to 5,604.14, marking its 8th straight gain. Dow Jones added 0.2% to 40,752.96. Nasdaq surged 1.5% to 17,710.74, erasing April’s losses. Microsoft jumped 9% after posting $70B in revenue, with strong AI-fueled cloud growth. Meta also beat expectations with a 16% YoY revenue gain and plans to ramp […]
May 2, 2025 | Household Struggles Weigh on Real Estate and Spending
A surge in active listing supply and an increase in price reductions failed to lure more homebuyers off the sidelines in April, as US pending home sales dropped for the fourth consecutive month (chart below via Realtor.com®). See, Supply of Homes for Sale Hits a Post-Pandemic High in April—but Pending Sales Drop as Buyers Grapple With Economic Uncertainty: The […]
May 2, 2025 | Canada Inevitable Split East and West
All my sources have been singing the same song. Carney won by creating hatred of Donald Trump, for this was a strategy carried out for the sole purpose of moving away from the USA and aligning with the EU. Even when Carney first became PM, he went to the EU, not to Washington. He is […]
May 1, 2025 | Next General Stock Market Decline Underway. Energy Stocks Likely To Reach Table Pounding BUYS Again In Late May
The Canadian Federal election resulted in a minority Liberal government that will need legislative support from the Bloc. Its leader has said he would support the new government for a year if the Liberals spend $2B more in Quebec. Is this for housing, the high speed train between Montreal and Quebec City or more generous […]
May 1, 2025 | Serious Question: How Long is Our Run?
Equity prices have made some ‘mean reversion’ progress year-to-date. At the end of March, the average geometric valuation for S&P 500 companies had declined to 148% from 167% in February (below since 1900, courtesy of Advisor Perspectives). This was the lowest since June 2024, but still, the most expensive in history and three standard deviations […]
May 1, 2025 | Washington State Deficit in the Billions – Taxes to Rise
Washington state is multiplying taxes for mega corporations in a move to cover its widening budget deficit. The state is expected to face a $12 to $16 billion shortfall over the next four years, according to the Office of Financial Management. The deficit should come as no surprise as state spending has ballooned by 40% […]
April 30, 2025 | Rocks and Hard Places Leave No Easy Out
This morning, the first quarter 2025 US GDP estimate disappointed with a -0.3% annualized contraction (vs. -0.2% annualized estimate). At the same time, US consumer confidence surveys show future expectations at a 14-year low (below via Bloomberg, see US consumer confidence slumps). All three expectation components — business conditions, employment prospects, and future income — deteriorated […]
April 30, 2025 | Art of the Collapse, May 2025
Let’s start, once again, with a warning to never, ever believe anything you see online: April was tax month, so people were more than normally aware of the gap between what we think we’re paying for and what we get: What’s even dumber than taxes and debt? War, of course: Then there’s the trade war. […]
April 29, 2025 | Carney’s Victory Speech – Relationship with US is Over
Carney’s Victory Speech was an acknowledgement that what we are witnessing is truly more than just a hate fest against Trump. Carney is saying the relationship between USA and Canada is over. This is not about tariffs. This is about power. Just as the media has been 92%+ anti-Trump, this is the FAR LEFT and […]
April 29, 2025 | US Imports from China Plunge
Gene Seroka, Port of LA executive director, joins ‘Squawk Box’ to discuss the impact of tariffs on U.S. imports and shipments, impact of new tariffs on Chinese goods on shipments from China, tariff impact on retailers, and more. Here is a direct video link. It takes about 30 days for container shipments to go from China […]
April 28, 2025 | Carney Wins Canada & the Recession into 2027 Begins
I have never witnessed such outright lies by a candidate as Carney. But hey, it has worked. With the votes in from the East, giving the Liberals 150 seats out of 343 so far, there is no way the Conservatives will get a majority. Our model provided three numbers for the Liberals: 41.25, 45.40, and […]
April 28, 2025 | Risk-off Following Familiar Pattern
The extremely over-valued, tech-concentrated US stock market has been a bug in search of a window for a long time. Trump’s chaos is accelerating an inevitable mean reversion that started with the bursting of the AI bubble on China’s DeepSeek news on January 10th. Year to date, the US market has been underperforming international stock […]
April 28, 2025 | Election Day
Happy Monday Morning! Today is the day, Canadians across the country will head to the voting booths and decide the direction of the country for the next four years. Polls suggest another liberal government, but polls are often wrong. This will be a tight race, so get out and vote. Cost of living and housing […]
April 28, 2025 | Recession Watch: Real Estate Is Already There
As always, when it comes to real estate, Wolf Richter’s analysis and charts are very helpful. Let’s take the office building story step-by-step: Between 2010 and 2020, millions of square feet of office space were financed with unnaturally cheap credit. During the pandemic, millions of Americans discovered that they prefer working from home and refused to return […]
April 27, 2025 | Health Prepping: Seed Oils Are Poison
Seed oils are getting a lot of bad press, so I’ve been reading ingredient lists with them in mind. The results are heartbreaking. Things that seemed healthy have turned out, thanks to their reliance on seed oils, to fall into the “heavily processed, do not eat” category. A couple of examples: This Thai curry paste […]
April 27, 2025 | Tariff-Induced Paralysis
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 […]
April 27, 2025 | Zelensky the Destroyer of Europe
The Failure of the London peace talks last Week was a critical defining moment. The “peace talks,” which were meant to take place in London on Wednesday, April 23, 2025, collapsed as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Steve Wytkoff cancelled their attendance. Instead, Wytkoff headed for Moscow for his fourth meeting with […]
April 27, 2025 | Insanely Bullish Forecast Survives Yet Another Week
[My prediction three weeks ago that the bear market had seen its worst seemed crazy at the time — particularly to me, because I’m an inveterate permabear. However, last week, bulls distanced themselves further from the low of the mini-crash that occurred when tariff panic was in the air. I’d said the selling would take […]