Where's the global economic meltdown? We're 3 months into a war with Iran, the Strait of Hormuz closed. 20% of global LNG is shutdown for the next 3 years, 20% of global crude oil production is being affected, 30% of global fertilizer supply is shut off, and roughly a third of global helium supply is bottled up in the gulf. [...]
Trump, The Sequel: The First 15 Months The first 15 months of President Trump's second term has seen a whirlwind of policy changes, many of which have been notable for their extreme nature. President Trump's style, his modus operandi, is capricious and so are his policies - unpredictable, impulsive, and often a result of anger at some perceived slight. To [...]
Special Note On Hurricane Beryl: As thousands of people in coastal Texas remain without power after Hurricane Beryl devastated the region last week, relief groups on the ground are asking for donations to aid their efforts. Here are a few organizations that can put monetary gifts to use right now. - "Where crisis strikes, hunger follows." The U.N. World Food [...]
PPI Goods = -1.5% PPI Services = 2.1% PPI FD = .9% PPI translation to the consumer: PPI FD Personal Consumption = 1.04% PPI FD Personal Consumption less Food and Energy = 2.2% PPI FD Personal Consumption less Food, Energy and Trade Services = 2.9% PPI FD Personal Consumption less Food, Energy and Distributive Services = 3.4% We continue to [...]
Markets were rather volatile last week. That's a wild understatement and what passes for sarcasm in the investment business. Stocks started the week waiting with bated (baited?) breath for the inflation reports of the week. It isn't surprising that the market is focused firmly on the rearview mirror for clues about the future since Jerome Powell has made it plain [...]
Nothing happened last week. Stocks and bonds and commodities continued to trade and move around in price but there was no news to which those movements could be attributed. The economic news was a trifle and what there was told us exactly nothing new about the economy. A report that wholesale inventories rose 0.6% cannot be turned into market moving [...]
Investors crave certainty. They want to know that there are definitive signals for them to follow as they adjust their investments to fit the current market and economy. They want to know that A leads to B leads to C. Tea leaf readers are always in high demand on Wall Street and they continue to find employment despite their almost [...]
Rate hikes weren’t even a twinkle in Chairman Powell’s eye, not really. Taper was barely on the table at that time, let alone double-taper or today’s rush into QT. Back in October, they all (correctly) still used the word transitory, therefore officials were taking their sweet time winding down QE6.With the Fed barely evolving from full-on – so it couldn’t [...]
It takes time even for a powerful eruption of deflationary money to get sorted into the real economy. Nothing goes in a straight line and even big changes don't just happen right away. The last time, Euro$ #4, it began early in 2018 triggering all kinds of financial disruptions and monetary fireworks. The same familiar indications, rising dollar, flattening and [...]
While the world fixated on the US CPI, it was other “inflation” data from across the Pacific that is telling the real economic story. Having conflated the former with a red-hot economy, the fact American consumer prices aren’t tied to the actual economic situation has been lost in the shuffle of the FOMC’s hawkishness, with markets obliged to price wrong-way [...]
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