Blog

  President Trump stepped up the pressure on China to resolve the current trade war by unexpectedly increasing tariffs on China’s exports to the United States. According to a tweet from President Trump, tariffs have increased to 25 percent on $250 billion worth of… More >>

  Investors have seen the Federal Reserve come full circle over the past five months.  The Fed went from a “hawkish” rhetoric and raising interest rates to a “dovish” rhetoric putting further interest rates on hold for the foreseeable future. [i]     Bond investors… More >>

  Last week the S&P 500 added a new notch to its belt.  For the first time since September 2018, the S&P 500 closed at a new all-time high.  [i]   This came on the back of the U.S. posting its best first quarter GDP since 2016.  According to the advance… More >>

    With just a few weeks’ worth of S&P 500 earnings reports released for Q1 2019, the earnings recession we have been talking about for many weeks is beginning to take shape. So far with 15 percent of companies reporting their Q1 2019 earnings, FactSet is… More >>

  To celebrate Earth Day almost 40 years ago, Walt Kelly wrote, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”  The essence of his work was to remind Americans we were all responsible for hurting the environment. [i] Oddly enough, we had a similar reminder during last week’s… More >>

  After completing the first full trading week of the second quarter, the market continues to rocket toward the all-time highs it reached last September.  With the market’s exuberance, we’d like to remind investors of the potential clouds headed our way, as we present… More >>

    Talks of a recession seem to be on everyone’s mind following the decision by the Federal Reserve to put a hold on further interest rate hikes in 2019.  During last week’s blog post, “A Stair Case Maze of Confusion,” we discussed the inverted yield curve and its… More >>

(Earnings Recessions, Inverted Yield Curves, and Economic Recessions)   Every few years I repurpose some old themes and remind our readers that, although past performance is not always indicative of future performance, cycles do repeat themselves.  Through 2015 and much… More >>

  In most developed countries, an important public utility like power or water is always available with the flip of a switch or the turn of a knob.  As consumers, we have grown so dependent on these reliable services that we hardly think about how they work.  The… More >>

  The latest Employment Situations report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on Friday, March 8, 2019, suggested the economy is in the midst of a massive cooling down. The United States economy added a mere 20,000 jobs versus the 181,000 that economists were… More >>