Weekly Commentary

Standing at the threshold of one of the most anticipated periods on the financial calendar – corporate earnings season – we find ourselves getting back to what matters most for equity markets. This time of the year, companies from various sectors open their books, unveiling their financial performance for the quarter. It is a moment […]

Bond yields have been rising at an alarming rate recently, especially considering the Federal Reserve has been cutting short-term interest rates. 1 The Fed Funds rate is 100 bps lower, yet the 10-year Treasury yield is just over 100 bps higher. That’s certainly not what was expected when the Fed started their rate cutting cycle. […]

Wall Street’s annual tradition of “precise inaccuracy” is upon us again, offering a perfect moment to reflect on its forecasting ability. At the end of 2023, they projected a mere 1.22% gain for the S&P 500 in 2024, underestimating actual performance by over 1,800%, while their GDP growth forecast undershot reality by 138%. For 2025, […]

“To me the most beautiful word in the dictionary is tariff…” – Donald Trump, October, 2024 1 As we enter an era of America First trade and economic policies, it raises the question: can tariffs be beautiful? Note, this is an explanation and not a rationalization. Here is how tariffs work. Typically, all roads lead […]

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 […]