Weekly Commentary

It’s been a remarkable year for equity investors when you consider the S&P 500 has hit an all-time high 56 times so far in 2024. 1 It’s not the best “all-time high” year but it’s near the best in the last 100 years. 2 Around this time of year, I always look back at how […]

This week should bring another interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve, as the futures markets are indicating. 1 Yet headline inflation has ticked up a bit after several months of moderation. 2 The recent CPI data suggests inflation is stalling above the Fed’s 2% target and might influence interest rate policy in the coming […]

Last week’s jobs report presented new evidence that the U.S. labor market continues its delicate balancing act toward a soft landing. While the jobs report’s headline metric of nonfarm payrolls posted a 277,000 advance in November, another gauge of household employment declined by about 355k people, raising questions as to which is the stronger signal […]

It’s intuitively hard to invest when valuations on stocks are at record highs. Under normal circumstances, you would think that investments made at these levels would produce negative returns. According to J.P. Morgan, it’s quite the opposite. Historically, investing at all-time highs has produced returns greater than 5% across every time period measured other than […]

It might surprise many of you to know I ran for U.S. Congress once on a platform made up of a Wasteful Spending Commission. That was 20 years ago, and at that time voters didn’t care about $1.5 million to study dog fighting or the $500,000 Congress gave to Alaska Airlines to paint a Chinook […]

While we have been focused on the U.S. Presidential election, something is amiss with interest rates. The Federal Reserve has been cutting the Fed Funds rate, but treasury rates are still rising both on the 2-year and 10-year. 1 What’s going on? For one, inflation continues to be sticky, with the most recent reading on […]

The recent U.S. election is being analyzed a thousand ways. Whatever way you see it, Americans voted for a change, and they were not alone. This year marked the first time that voters worldwide collectively voted for change. 1 Developed economies around the world faced two primary trends: illegal immigration and high inflation. These issues […]

We’re just a day away from electing a President, and the headline economy is performing very well. The U.S. economy expanded in Q3, with 2.8% GDP growth and consumer spending constituting 3.7% of that growth. This represents the highest consumer growth rate since Q1 2023. We are also seeing a significant bump in goods consumption […]

  Last week’s post focused on earnings, but I included a small teaser on tax policy using the chart below. It generated some interest, so perhaps it’s time to take a macro look at the implications of both the Harris and Trump tax policies. 1     According to the Tax Policy Institute, the Trump […]

In the coming weeks, the amount of political noise will be all-consuming. I’m sure it will be sucking all of the oxygen out of the earnings season which will be in full swing by the November election. The various tax proposals will be mind-boggling, with daily permutations. Currently the proposals look a little something like […]