In spite of all the mayhem in Washington, May 1 2019 was the important date to the stock market. The hype since January 2017 is running out of steam. The Fed doesn’t matter Now. China doesn’t matter Now. Trump’s next…Continue Reading →

Following up on Themes The Economic Fracture The little hiccup in the market yesterday occurred at an important level and is the first indication of a change in the bounce since 12/24/18, other than a brief change on 1/29/19. The…Continue Reading →

What ? While the long-term trend is to lower rates, we would not be surprised at a short-term rise in the 10 year rate, quite possibly to a new high for the year (200 day average rate is 2.84% )…Continue Reading →

The efforts of the FED and Washington to jawbone the markets out of the Christmas eve swoon are increasingly impressive, but the key question is, does it change the Macro environment.  We will soon find out if January 26, 2018…Continue Reading →

Here is the monthly chart on 30 year interest rates going back to 2000.  I would not be surprised to see at a minimum the 2.5 rate tested over the next 18 months, and likely a blowout down to 1.5…Continue Reading →

The Verdict The verdict is still out on the stock market rally since Christmas Eve 2018.  It has been impressive, but what does it say about the next 18 months. Prognosticators out in Force It seems that many want to…Continue Reading →

As tariff and corporate tax turmoil put a shadow over the world economy and hope and hype still rein over everything, it will be interesting to see which country or group of  corporations will take the hit.  Will it be…Continue Reading →

In my opinion, what happened with Lindsay this morning, see below, is the primary market factor going forward, Corporate CEO trade based optimism has led them into ignoring real demand and has induced the building of unsold inventory.  Ironically government…Continue Reading →

As long term readers know, we only mention a few information sources that we follow. One is John Mauldin’s letter, here is the one from last Saturday.  It echo’s much of my take on things currently.   John Mauldin  4/6/2019…Continue Reading →

Yahoo Finance headline today that tells a lot of the story of this economy. US companies’ tax windfall fuels record share buybacks. This is what we tried to warn against concerning the Trump Tax Changes, the fact that it would…Continue Reading →

Is there no resistance to this phenomenon? It seems a bit like unprecedented times, with the FED caving to White House pressure and an orchestrated output of known negatives being declared positives by the White House.  

The flattening of the yield curve has completed its job of forecasting weak growth.  Now we expect it to be a background factor until we reach the end of the asset deflation downturn.  This asset downturn has barely started. At…Continue Reading →

The mystery of why we probably are headed into a recession is more about international trade than some other factors being mentioned.  Here is our take on some trade related issues. Dominant US Presence In general the US as the…Continue Reading →

Big Picture Doesn’t matter what Powell does or says this week. The issues driving the economy are Bernanke’s QE’s and Trump’s tax cuts. Old news and unproductive for Real Growth. We monitor the deflationary scorecard. Cross trends for stocks, commodities,…Continue Reading →

The Environment At the moment I feel lost in an environment where economic fundamentals are ignored.  The Atlanta Fed GDPNOW estimate for the first quarter has been updated three times and still is at 0.4 %.  Economic reports add information…Continue Reading →