Weekly Commentary

A few days ago, I was standing in line at a convenience store somewhere in rural Oregon. The guy in front of me bought gas, a sports drink, beef jerky, and a can of ZYNs. The cashier read him the total and he paused for a second, looked down, and quietly put the beef jerky […]

Economic expansions are strange because investors expect them to feel obvious while they’re happening, and they usually feel fragile. There are always reasons to be cautious. Oil prices, interest rates, and political headlines create uncertainty. Economists debate recession probabilities on television as if downturns arrive on scheduled calendars. Yet underneath all that noise, the actual […]

For most of this cycle, the U.S. economy has been carried by the consumer. People complained about inflation, worried about rates, grumbled about the price of groceries, and then kept spending anyway. That is the odd resilience of the last few years. The consumer does not feel great, but the register keeps ringing. Now the […]

There is a strange split in the economy right now. Consumers say they feel terrible as sentiment is scraping along near historic lows. If you just looked at survey data, you would assume the economy was already rolling over and the stock market should be struggling. But that is not what is happening. People may […]

Last week, I wrote (Can Fear Fuel The Next Rally?) that the tone of the news had become so negative that it was beginning to create the conditions for a rally, rather than setting up another leg down. That is often how markets work. They bottom or rebound not when the headlines improve—although they sometimes […]

When fear shows up, it rarely knocks politely. It barges in through the headlines, raises its voice, and tells us that whatever is happening right now will probably get worse before it gets better. That is where we are again. The failed Iran peace talks, blockades, and threats of more military conflict have put oil […]

This week, let’s start with this chart. It might help describe what I believe is a shift in employment vs. an overall weakness in jobs. When you step back and watch employment over time, the labor market rarely breaks in a straight line. It shifts. Different parts of the economy take turns doing the heavy […]

On March 28, Egypt announced something that would have sounded strange a few years ago but feels perfectly rational in an energy squeeze1. The government said it would slow some fuel-intensive state projects for at least two months, cut fuel allocations for government vehicles by 30%, and move both public- and private-sector employees to remote […]

Over the past few weeks, it’s been hard to have a conversation with clients without oil coming up. It’s visible, and it moves quickly. And when it does, people feel it almost immediately — at the pump, in the headlines, and in the general tone of the market. But one of the challenges in moments […]

In the summer of 1987, the U.S. Navy launched Operation Earnest Will, escorting oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz during the Iran-Iraq War. At the time the global economy depended on that narrow passage more than most people realized. Roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil supply flowed through the strait each day. Tankers were […]