ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR INVESTMENT PROFESSIONAL BEFORE MAKING ANY INVESTMENT DECISION
April 6, 2025 | Deflation Watch: Cheaper Oil = Cheaper Everything = Plunging Interest Rates
This post’s title sketches out a formula that ends with the world’s governments panic-printing their currencies. To flesh out the thesis, let’s start with energy’s impact on our cost of living: Energy Is In Everything Pretty much all of life’s necessities have an energy component. A car, for instance, requires electricity and petrochemicals to build […]
April 6, 2025 | The Tariff Recession?
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 […]
April 6, 2025 | Trump About to Kick the Bear Market’s Ass
A word of advice if you’re looking for bankable information on the direction of the economy: tune out the mainstream media’s cavalcade of Trump-deranged bozos and focus on the 4820 target in the SPX chart above. Think of it as Trump’s lucky number, but also a very good place for these all-too-interesting times to find […]
April 5, 2025 | Why is Trump Using Tariffs? The Truth That Has Misled the World on Tariffs
For all the criticism of Trump and the risk of a global trade war, as Macron wants to unleash a trade war to elevate France to the top of the EU, if we just look at the data, we can see why Trump has taken this approach. Even those Republicans like Rand Paul joining […]
April 5, 2025 | Markets Tumble as Tariff Shock Sparks Global Selloff
Global stock markets suffered a steep crash today after President Donald Trump announced sweeping new tariffs, triggering one of the worst trading days in years. Major Index Losses Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 4%, shedding 1,680 points — its steepest single-day drop since 2020. S&P 500 sank 4.8%, approaching correction territory. Nasdaq Composite plunged 6%, […]
April 5, 2025 | Trading Desk Notes for April 5, 2025
Slowly at first, and then suddenly The cash S&P 500 index closed Friday ~9% below last Friday’s close, with virtually all of those losses coming after Trump’s Liberation Day ceremony. The index is down ~17.5% from mid-February’s record highs, and outside of the covid crash in 2020, the two-day performance on Thursday/Friday was the worst since the […]
April 5, 2025 | Tech Talk for Saturday April 5th 2025
The Bottom Line World equity markets were “Trumped” after the close on Wednesday. Equity indices around the world dropped sharply after the close on Wednesday when President Trump announced higher than expected tariffs on goods entering into the U.S. Weakness in world equity markets escalated on Friday when countervailing tariffs were announced by China. Other […]
April 4, 2025 | The Mar-a-Lago Accord Initiative is Already in Trouble
base because they were expecting a more gentle and nuanced approach. Could Trump’s tariff war produce good results? Source: Bloomberg, Bloomberg Chat On Thursday we learned that the stock market had not priced assets to fully reflect the impact of a new round of almost universal tariffs. But Trump and his advisors did not care […]
April 4, 2025 | Hits Keep Coming
Many people are now starting to realize (again) that they lack meaningful risk management and their financial health is in danger. The segments below offer some lucid economic observations. Wall Street economists predict a US recession this year and a return to pandemic-level inflation due to the Trump administration’s announcement of major tariffs on global […]
April 4, 2025 | How Do We Play This Bear Market?
Pretty much every “buy” recommendation in this newsletter has come with a version of this caveat: We’re in the late stages of a long credit expansion, which means a potentially brutal recession and/or bear market is likely imminent. So approach these stocks with caution. Don’t jump in all at once. Instead, add to positions in […]
April 3, 2025 | What Just Happened? Part 1: Gold and Silver Fall Hard
Gold and silver are being pulled down by a general equities bear market this morning. That’s not surprising, but the details are interesting. Some background: Rush to get gold to the U.S. halts abruptly with tariff exemption (Bloomberg) – A massive arbitrage trade that has drawn tens of billions of dollars’ worth of gold and […]
April 3, 2025 | Tariffs are NOT Reciprocal
How did the Trump Administration come up with these tariff rates? Why would a nation like Madagascar, for example, with a small economy, be hit with a 47% tariff? Reciprocal tariffs were determined based on America’s trade deficit with other nations. They took each nation’s trade surplus with the US by total exports and […]
April 3, 2025 | DOGE Broadens Its Scope
Financial markets have many moving parts and the new Trump administration unnerves the status quo on both sides of the aisle. Inevitably, both good and bad will result from all of this mayhem. We must be capable of cognitive dissonance and hold opposing assessments depending on the issue; many are not. If asset bubbles continue […]
April 2, 2025 | Japan, China, and South Korea Strengthen Ties Amid US Tariffs
Tariff concerns have heightened to such an extreme level that China and Japan are discussing deepening ties. Donald Trump may be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for that one. Japan and China, along with South Korea, held their first trade discussions in half a decade where they agreed to navigate US tariffs. One of the […]
April 2, 2025 | Weaker US Consumption Leads To 6.2Mb Increase In Commercial Crude Stocks. WTI Expected To Fall Below US$67/b.
While the US federal government cuts its employee count sharply in recent weeks the private sector is adding jobs at a fast pace. Today the ADP report showed private sector jobs rose 155,000 in March above the 120,000 forecast. Professional and business services added 57,000 workers, Financial services 38,000 (tax season ramp up), manufacturing 21,000 […]
April 2, 2025 | Heads Up
Historically, when the S&P 500 has fallen 10% and the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury bond has declined 50+ basis points, the U.S. economy has been heading into recession about 70% of the time. We reached both milestones in March. The economically sensitive small-cap Russell 2000 index is down 17% since last November, and Canada’s […]
April 1, 2025 | Art of the Collapse, April 2025
Two strange and unprecedented things (“scandals,” “outrages” — it’s hard to know what to call them) are triggering meme-makers as this is written. First, Elon Musk morphed from industrialist to government efficiency crusader, in the process enraging the segment of the population that owns Teslas, leading them to … vandalize Teslas: The other thing was that government […]
April 1, 2025 | Are States & Provinces Destined to Default by 2034?
You have to wonder why we have the most incompetent people in government, perhaps in history. While there is not a single leader in Europe who I would even want to have a drink with or shake hands, we see the same on the LEFT in the United States. No matter how often they […]
April 1, 2025 | Ice Storm For The Ages
It’s hard to imagine how damaging ice storms can be without witnessing them. After six decades of living in the north, this experience was a first for me. Big trees become weapons of mass destruction. There’s still no power or internet in our area. After a full day of sawing, cutting, and dragging tree parts, […]
March 31, 2025 | The Human QE Hangover
Happy Monday Morning! As we learned last week, Canada’s population surge has come to an end. Population growth rose by just 0.15% last quarter, which outside of the 2020 lockdowns was the slowest quarter for population growth since 2017. For the first time in three years, the non-permanent resident cohort outright contracted. More importantly, if […]
March 31, 2025 | Ice Carnage Made in Canada
This weekend’s ice storm hit hard. Since Saturday, we have relied on a generator and intermittent cell service. We’re the lucky ones in that only our yard was decimated by crashing trees. Many people sustained direct hits to their homes. It looks like a war zone. Fortunately, warm air has melted the assailing ice sheets […]
March 31, 2025 | Prophets, Nomads and a Fourth Turning Accelerating Towards A Bloody Climax
“In retrospect, the spark might seem as ominous as a financial crash, as ordinary as a national election, or as trivial as a Tea Party. The catalyst will unfold according to a basic Crisis dynamic that underlies all of these scenarios: An initial spark will trigger a chain reaction of unyielding responses and further emergencies. […]
March 31, 2025 | WHO Cuts Budget by 20% – A Kick to the Great Reset
The World Health Organization admitted that it has “no choice” but to cut its budget substantially. America’s exodus from the organization left the WHO with a budget gap of $600 million for FY2025, and it plans to cut expenditures by 20%. The United States provided 16.3% of all funding from FY2022-2023, amounting to $1.3 […]
March 30, 2025 | Seven Charts That Put the Gold Bull Market in Context
Remember that long, boring stretch where gold couldn’t break resistance at $2,000/oz? Here it is in the context of this century’s bull market — note the definitive breakout in early 2024. What’s driving the bull market? Central bank buying. And what’s driving that? Geopolitics. Emerging market central banks started planning for a post-dollar world when the Ukraine […]
March 30, 2025 | Do Trade Deficits Matter?
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 […]