ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR INVESTMENT PROFESSIONAL BEFORE MAKING ANY INVESTMENT DECISION
October 6, 2024 | Stocks Act Fearless as Oil Price Soars
If you can keep a cool head while everyone around you is panicking, perhaps you don’t understand the situation. That’s what they say, anyway. It is exactly what we saw last week when stocks barely shrugged even as the shooting war in the Middle East took another baby step toward nuclear conflagration. The oil markets […]
October 5, 2024 | Broke FEMA and the Shrinking Trust Horizon
So they send the Tennessee National Guard to the Middle East and FEMA (it is widely claimed) spends its rainy day fund on illegal immigrants. And then, because that’s how the universe works, a massive hurricane hits the South and FEMA runs out of money: Now the victims seem to be on their own — further eroding trust in the […]
October 5, 2024 | Danielle on CBC Weekend Business Panel
CBC News Network’s Weekend Business Panel takes on the top news of the week. Here is a direct video link.
October 5, 2024 | The Panic Cycle in September A Warning for the Future
QUESTION: Marty, it appears that the September panic was on the upside, and it also appears to be a turning point. It looks like it may be a high in the Dow and Gold on a closing basis. I must say, it’s far easier to see now that this election may be the last. Does […]
October 5, 2024 | Tech Talk for Saturday October 5th 2024
The Bottom Line Focus this week is on September U.S. inflation reports. Consensus calls for a slight reduction for September CPI and September PPI on a monthly basis and year-over-year basis. Official launch of the third quarter report season starts on Friday when results by some of the biggest U.S. banks are released. As noted […]
October 4, 2024 | The Incompetence of Government is Systemic – A Cover-Up for the Election?
Let me explain something about the government. Elon Musk is outraged that FEMA has blocked humanitarian efforts in the wake of widespread devastation in North Carolina. Elon Musk has had a go at FEMA because their actions are outrageous, and people will die because of it. Government employees have (1) myopic vision since they have no […]
October 4, 2024 | Canada is Falling Behind The U.S.
Canada is falling behind the U.S. in economic growth. Up until a few years ago, Canada and its huge neighbour to the south grew by about the same annual rate. But since 2022 Canada is falling behind by most measures. What happened? The Economist wrote an article on September 30, 2024 titled “Why is Canada’s economy falling […]
October 3, 2024 | American Hurricane Victims Forced to Support Israel for Govt Aid
Texans applying for relief from Hurricane Harvey faced an unusual stipulation to receive aid. Over 20,000 people in Dickinson, Texas, had their lives affected by the storm. The US federal government is offering to provide some form of aid, but first, residents must agree to support Israel. The “Verification not to Boycott Israel” clause […]
October 3, 2024 | Canadian Rough Patch Getting Rougher
Canadian businesses are closing at one of the fastest rates in history. See: Canada Just Saw One in Twenty Businesses Close in a Month, Biggest Wave Since the Pandemic. Since the vast majority of private sector job growth is driven by small—to medium-sized companies, it’s not surprising that job vacancies (blue line on the lower right […]
October 2, 2024 | Canada’s Birth Rate Plummets
For the second consecutive year, fewer women are giving in birth in Canada. The country now has a birth rate of 1.26 children per woman, with some provinces like British Columbia reporting a rate of only 1 child per woman. Yet, the number of children remained consistent year-over-year at 350,000, although there was a 5% […]
October 2, 2024 | Iran’s Threat To Use It’s Largest And Most Lethal Ballistic Missiles To Attack Israel Lifted The Crude Oil War Premium by US$5/b
The first major issue to be concerned about is the Middle East: Israel’s multi-phased removal of the top military and leadership of the terrorist group Hezbollah has moved the northern Israeli war front to a more deadly phase. Starting with the killing of longtime Hezbollah leader, Nassan Nasrallah (believed to be a direct descendant of […]
October 2, 2024 | Investment Advice of the Ages
“Don’t take investment advice from anyone under the age of 50. They haven’t had their head in the cement mixer enough times.” ~ My Dad Dad was a builder/developer in San Diego for 55 years. He was a smart man.
October 1, 2024 | China Launches Next Wave of Asset Propping Efforts
2024 has seen the most aggressive central bank easing globally since the 2020 pandemic and 2008-09. Whatever ‘stimulus’ impacts may flow from this will filter into the economy over the next few years. In the nearer term, the 22-fold tightening cycle of 2022-2023 will continue to weigh on borrowing and spending ability over the next […]
October 1, 2024 | I Survived
Thank you for all the inquiries; I survived. My house is blocked and poured concrete. I have a real sea wall, and all the pavers around the pool are in concrete, not sand. I stayed because the NEWS is worthless. The last time I left, they showed the most devastated areas – not what is […]
September 30, 2024 | The Revolt of the Public, Part 2
Two weeks ago, I began reviewing Martin Gurri’s important book, The Revolt of the Public, with this framework: “In my cycles book I’m reviewing the forecasts of Neil Howe, Peter Turchin, George Friedman, and Ray Dalio. For different historical reasons and patterns, all see a crisis culminating at the end of this decade. Some readers have […]
September 30, 2024 | Free Markets
Happy Monday Morning! This newsletter isn’t all bad news. We finally got some good policy out of Ottawa this past week. OSFI, the banking regulator, announced it will finally remove the stress test for homeowners who wish to switch lenders at mortgage renewal time. Under previous guidelines, when the mortgage term ended and a borrower […]
September 30, 2024 | Housing Downturn Intensifies with Motivated Sellers
Nationally, the supply of new one-family homes in America (shown below since the 1960s) has only been higher in the 2005 housing bubble peak. As more existing homes come on the market from stretched households and investors, home supply is rising in most areas. The median price of a new single-family home fell by 4.6% […]
September 29, 2024 | Levitating Kamala
Expect stocks to continue their heedless waft into outer space until the election. They would not likely do so if investors even remotely imagined Kamala Harris might win. James Kunstler provided the most succinct reason we’ve heard for why this is not going to happen: “The people in this land are finally sick of a […]
September 29, 2024 | You Don’t Need a Weatherman To Know Which Way The Wind Blows
Twenty years of schoolin’ And they put you on the day shift Look out kid They keep it all hid Bob Dylan – Subterranean Homesick Blues As we accelerate towards whatever disastrous outcome awaits our debt-ridden, delusional, decadent, despairing society, I seem to be drawn to the anti-establishment lyrics of Bob Dylan, written during the […]
September 28, 2024 | The Trading Desk Notes for September 28, 2024
Traders are more interested in the market’s reaction to news than the news itself. This week’s news flow felt like a tsunami after the dog days of summer, but for the markets I trade, the big news was the monetary and fiscal stimulus in China, the acceleration of Israeli attacks on Hezbollah, and the shift in […]
September 28, 2024 | Tech Talk for Saturday September 28th 2024
The Bottom Line Greatest influence on equity markets last week was the recovery in China after the Peoples Bank of China added monetary stimulus to the economy. Chinese equity indices, ETFs and individual equities listed on North American equity markets soared. Sectors influenced by a recovery in China quickly caught the wave: North American gold, […]
September 27, 2024 | 10% Cap on Credit Card Fees?
APR fees on credit cards have never been higher, reaching an average of 24.92% as of September 2024 in the United States. In fact, credit card interest rates have not been beneath 10% since the early 90s. Consumer debt has never been higher and countless households have fallen into a snowball situation where they simply accumulate more […]
September 27, 2024 | College and the Shrinking Trust Horizon
Law professor Jonathan Turley just posted an article that contains a fascinating stat: “From 2010 to 2021, [university] enrollments fell from roughly 18.1 million students to about 15.4 million.” The decline is apparently continuing, and Turley blames diminishing trust in the quality of the education now offered by American schools. Here’s an excerpt from Turley’s post: What Happens […]
September 27, 2024 | China Moves into Panic Mode
China entered full panic mode, announcing stimulus measures to counteract the deflationary impact of weak property prices. But those policies may not be enough to lift the economy to the 5 percent growth target. This week China announced several measures to stimulate demand in a weak economy, a last-ditch effort to meet GDP growth goals […]
September 27, 2024 | Employment Cycle Drives Reactionary Monetary Policy
Stock markets have soared further on soft landing hopes, just as they initially did when the U.S. Fed cut base rates by 50 basis points in January 2001 and September 2007. Other more prescient leading and coincident economic indicators warn of cause for pause. As shown below (courtesy of Jeff Weniger), the ratio of leading […]