ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR INVESTMENT PROFESSIONAL BEFORE MAKING ANY INVESTMENT DECISION
August 2, 2026 | The Fed Conundrum: Who’s Got the Votes?
This week’s vote from the Federal Reserve FOMC committee is going to have implications for quite some time. I think most of the pundits who are writing about this have their analysis wrong. This was not just a vote to not raise rates. I think there was a lot more going on behind the scenes. […]
July 26, 2026 | Long Term Rate Headache
I talk about the Federal Reserve often in these letters, and for good reasons. Fed policy has enormous influence on the economy. Yet the Fed has far more power in some areas than others. It has deep, almost dictatorial control over short-term interest rates and overnight bank liquidity and much less power over long-term yields. […]
July 19, 2026 | Inflation Conundrums
Last week I noted the problems of sitting down with a blank screen and trying to figure out what to write. This week I have the opposite problem: I have well over 20 important research notes from various authorities about inflation, Federal Reserve policy, and interest rates. The challenge will be to summarize the most […]
July 12, 2026 | Economic Anomalies
Next month I will begin my 27th year of writing this letter. The way I write, how I come up with topics, when I write have all changed over time. But one thing is consistent: when I sit down to write there is a blank screen. Some weeks topics are obvious. Some weeks I scramble […]
July 5, 2026 | The Great American Sleepover
This letter is going to be a little different, and much shorter. But on July 4 I hope it makes you feel good! Regular readers know I spend most of my writing time worrying — in a constructive, analytical way, I hope — about what I think is a coming national and economic crisis, […]
June 28, 2026 | Inflation Sinks Deeper
When we talk about inflation, the conversation usually centers on periods (like now) when inflation is especially high. Those are certainly problematic. But we can overlook a possibly bigger problem: other than a few short breaks, you and I have never seen a time when inflation wasn’t rising. Inflation isn’t some problem that pops up […]
June 21, 2026 | Social Insecurity, Surprise Edition
The Social Security Administration recently gave us their annual report with a few blockbuster footnotes. We all know that Social Security as it is currently constructed will run out of money in the early 2030s. Social Security’s cost has exceeded its non-interest income since 2010. Since then, payments have been made out of the so-called […]
June 13, 2026 | The G-Shaped Economy
This week is the final recap of the 2026 Strategic Investment Conference. I have always done summaries of the SIC afterwards, but I don’t think I’ve ever taken four weeks, let alone five weeks to cover it. And I feel we have only scratched the surface. There was just a lot of good content this […]
June 7, 2026 | Brave New World
In the summer of 1944, with the war in Europe not yet won, the United States convened 44 nations at a resort hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, and wrote the rules of the postwar world. The dollar would be the world’s reserve currency. The International Monetary Fund would manage imbalances. The World Bank would […]
May 31, 2026 | The Future Arrives Unevenly
In 1712, an ironmonger named Thomas Newcomen built a machine in Dudley, England that changed the world. Not immediately. Not obviously. The Newcomen engine was crude, inefficient, and mostly used to pump water out of coal mines. Nobody standing next to it would have recognized they were watching the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. They […]
May 24, 2026 | Past Performance is Not Indicative of Future Results
Two weeks after SIC ended, I am still assimilating everything. Different pieces are connecting in my head. I would like to tell you I have a clear vision of where we are headed. Sadly, that is not quite the case. Good things are coming, but not just yet. I remain, as always, an optimist about […]
May 17, 2026 | Shootout at the Inflation Corral
ne of the things I’ve learned after more than two decades of SIC is that the conference doesn’t really end when the final session wraps up. In some ways, that’s when the real work begins. It’s afterward, when I begin reviewing transcripts and notes, that the larger patterns start to emerge. I think there are […]
May 10, 2026 | What Billionaires Know About Investing
To the extent we have been successful, it is because we concentrated on identifying one-foothurdles that we could step over rather than because we acquired any ability to clear seven-footers.” ~ Warren Buffett This is the Strategic Investment Conference week, and I and our attendees are drinking through a fire hose. There have been […]
May 3, 2026 | WWWD?
There is a lot to unwrap this week. We’re going to explore what happened at the Fed, and what changes we can expect. Let’s just say it’s not what some are predicting, at least in my humble opinion. Inflation is sadly a growing problem. And that complicates Kevin Warsh’s coming tenure as Fed chair. […]
April 26, 2026 | Where Does a Random Walk Through The Data Lead Us?
Like many of you, I am inundated with information. Most of it is not useful or repetitive. Even filtering for relevant content and source, it feels like I’m getting many times more data than even 10 years ago. Part of that is my own fault. I have “curated” a group of trusted friends who share […]
April 19, 2026 | Divergent Data
I’ve been traveling for a week, reading and talking to a lot of readers and friends. It seems to me there is a great deal of angst in the media and newsletters and podcasts. And the more bearish you are, the greater your audience and clicks. There are so many analysts taking one or two […]
April 5, 2026 | The Energy Tax
As noted a few weeks ago, we get conflicting data that must not be extrapolated. The motto of the US Marines is a good one for all of us for the coming years: improvise, adapt and overcome. I would add, then adapt again. Today let’s look at some of the week’s conflicting data, then end […]
March 29, 2026 | Meet the Real Tony Starks
I remember the summer of 2006 when I literally was searching for something to write about. Nothing was happening. I think I reviewed several medical reports and books. That is not the case today. We are somewhere along the lines of there are times when nothing important happens for years, and then you get months […]
March 22, 2026 | The Glass Is Half…?
he old cliché: do you see the glass as half-full or half-empty? Depending on what you’re asking about, this can be a highly personal question. The old cliché: do you see the glass as half-full or half-empty? Depending on what you’re asking about, this can be a highly personal question. One person’s half-empty is another […]
March 15, 2026 | The Fog of Confusion
There has been so much data released in the past week it’s hard to know where to begin. And that is all compounded by the fog of confusion/war surrounding the “Iran conflict.” Rather than focus on a single topic, today we are going to go “around the horn” (an old term which refers to going […]
March 8, 2026 | AI and Creative Destruction
If you’re tuning in to see what I think of the latest Iran fireworks, you may be disappointed. My opinion is as accurate as market reactions have been. Which, given wild swings both ways, suggests no one really knows what to expect. So rather than dwell on a topic where your insight is as good […]
March 1, 2026 | The Coming Crisis: Fingers of Instability
This letter is a little different. I am indeed working on my book about what I believe is a coming crisis by reviewing five different cycle theories. They all arrive at a similar scenario from different points of view, but they all suggest a crisis occurring sometime around the end of this decade or perhaps […]
February 22, 2026 | Conflicting Data, Conflicting Results
Is inflation rising or falling? Is unemployment solid or are there significant issues? Given the massive revisions of labor data, how can we base decisions on employment numbers? And what happens when the various collected data conflicts with themselves? Given that there are no clear guidelines for policy decisions, those of us sitting in the […]
February 16, 2026 | A Paradigm Shift in Employment
We have been inundated with employment and labor data over the past few weeks. Some of it is finally catching up from reports delayed due to the government shutdown. Readers can be forgiven for feeling a bit of whiplash from the widely varying analysis of those numbers. Depending on who you read, things are either […]
February 8, 2026 | Federal Regime Change
Like people, institutions of all kinds get old. Some age less than gracefully. They become set in their ways, fixating on the past and ignoring new conditions. But because they’re “institutions,” change happens slowly. The Federal Reserve System is a great example. It has a critically important role in the economy but is designed to […]