Weekly Commentary

  This week I had the pleasure of spending a few private and public moments with our former US Secretary of the Treasury, Hank Paulson. While any private comments will remain just that, some of his public comments were very appropriate for the times we are in. I thought I would share them with the […]

  Coming off of a spectacular jobs report in the previous week, we should be seeing some pretty strong numbers from the US retail sector. It’s pretty easy to argue more people working would support more people spending. After all, 70% of the economy is driven by consumption.[i] Shockingly, early data from numerous retailers suggests […]

  Entering the Independence Day holiday, we had some pretty good economic news to celebrate. The jobs report from the Department of Labor came out on Thursday and crushed economists’ expectations. The report said the US economy added 288,000 jobs in the month of June and the unemployment rate plummeted to 6.1%, its lowest level […]

  The global equity markets continue to march forward in-spite of valuations.[i] The cyclically adjusted P/E (CAPE) ratio for the S&P 500, a 10-year average earnings compared to current price, is at historic levels only seen a few times in the last 100 years. Robert Shiller, the creator of this metric, suggests stocks may be […]

  It seems that no matter what is going on in the world, the stock market has had little reaction and continues to reach new highs. The Federal Reserve recently expressed its concern that investor complacency could “sow the seeds for disruptive market moves that could undermine the economy.”[i] Low volatility may encourage investors to […]

  Not too many weeks ago the world, and especially Europe, was faced with an energy crisis from Russia and its geopolitical adventures with Ukraine. Russia is responsible for about one fourth of Europe’s energy needs.[i] With the European Union being the largest combined economy in the world, that’s no small matter for anyone. Today […]

  We all look forward to retiring with sufficient funds to enjoy the latter part of our lives, but data from retirement surveys indicate that many Americans may not achieve this goal. The statistics are frightening: 46% of Americans have less than $10,000 saved for retirement. [i] 36% of Americans say that they don’t contribute […]

  The answer: Most of Wall Street, including to some degree us, when it comes to the short-term direction of interest rates. While we knew rates would be persistently low for some period of time, we expected a small rise in rates at the beginning of the year. See our posting on Too Soon to […]

  Jobs continue to dominate the headlines since Janet Yellen took control of the Federal Reserve. She has a legitimate dual mandate to improve the jobs picture by fostering “full-employment”, estimated as longer-term unemployment in the range of 5.2% to 6.0%, and maintaining inflation at 2%.[i] With most state political primary elections now in the […]

In The Wizard of Oz, the Cowardly Lion needed courage to overcome his fears and build some confidence. Based on recent data, the players in the housing market may be in need of some courage, as there appears to be plenty of signs of doubt with respect to the economic recovery, leading Goldman Sachs to […]