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Weekly Market Pulse: Paging George Katona

By |2021-11-15T09:31:00-05:00November 14th, 2021|Alhambra Research, Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Markets, Real Estate, Stocks|

Consumer sentiment hit a decade low last month, falling 6 points from an already low level. The culprit? Inflation, which we learned last week hit a 3 decade high in October. And if the founder of the University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey is right, the next thing we'll see is an economic slowdown. George Katona was a psychologist who [...]

Inflation Just Doesn’t Pass Math

By |2021-11-12T16:59:47-05:00November 12th, 2021|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

For the first time since last December, the level of Job Openings (JO) pictured by the BLS’s JOLTS survey declined. End of the line for the economy?I am intentionally overselling this monthly minus. While the latest figure for September 2021 was indeed less than the one for August, if only because August’s estimate was raised by several hundred thousand. Going [...]

Taper Math, Lazy Labor Slander

By |2021-10-12T17:59:30-04:00October 12th, 2021|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

The number of Job Openings for the month of July were revised upward, the BLS now thinking there had been more than 11 million of them during that month. Companies seem to be desperate for workers, at least judging by this one measure. The latest estimate for August 2021 came in well short of either the revised figure (11.1 million) [...]

Turning The LABOR SHORTAGE Up to 11

By |2021-09-08T17:53:40-04:00September 8th, 2021|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

In Massachusetts, the Federal Reserve’s First District, restaurateurs have struggled mightily to find workers. As part of the central bank’s Beige Book, one contact of the Boston leadership said the industry was “facing the worst labor shortage he has seen in 35 years of experience.” In response to such a major threat, these firms become truly creative to try to [...]

Weekly Market Pulse: Windshield Investing

By |2021-09-07T07:01:12-04:00September 6th, 2021|Alhambra Portfolios, Alhambra Research, Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets, Real Estate, Stocks|

The economic slowdown we've been writing about for months officially arrived last Friday in the form of a particularly weak employment report. The number of new jobs created last month - or at least the WAG the BLS makes at such things on a monthly basis - was a mere 235,000 or roughly a cool half-million less than expected by [...]

Weekly Market Pulse: Happy Anniversary!

By |2021-08-16T07:35:56-04:00August 15th, 2021|Alhambra Portfolios, Alhambra Research, Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets, Real Estate, Stocks|

Today is the 50th anniversary of the "Nixon shock", the day President Richard Nixon closed the gold window and ended the post-WWII Bretton Woods currency agreement. That agreement, largely a product of John Maynard Keynes, pegged the dollar to gold and most other currencies to the dollar. It wasn't a true gold standard as only other countries that were party [...]

Weekly Market Pulse: Is It Time To Panic Yet?

By |2021-07-11T23:59:35-04:00July 11th, 2021|Alhambra Research, Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Markets, Real Estate, Stocks|

Until last week you hadn't heard much about the bond market rally. I told you we were probably near a rally way back in early April when the 10-year was yielding around 1.7%. And I told you in mid-April that the 10-year yield could fall all the way back to the 1.2 to 1.3% range. The bond rally since April [...]

Weekly Market Pulse: Who’s The Boss?

By |2021-06-14T08:26:10-04:00June 13th, 2021|Alhambra Portfolios, Alhambra Research, Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets, Real Estate, Stocks, Taxes/Fiscal Policy|

I told you last week that there were strange things going on in the labor market but I had no idea how much of an understatement that really was. Much of last week's economic focus was on the inflation report but I think the JOLTS report may turn out to be more significant. Inflation was indeed pretty hot year over [...]

An Entirely Too Familiar American (anti)Inflationary Anecdote

By |2021-06-09T17:27:19-04:00June 9th, 2021|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

One of the more compelling aspects of the last LABOR SHORTAGE!!!!, in an outright contradictory way, was how it was made up of entirely anecdotes. Lacking data, especially wage data, the narrative was instead kept up and alive by the media hyping every small creative innovation companies were using if only to avoid having to actually pay their workers and [...]

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