ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR INVESTMENT PROFESSIONAL BEFORE MAKING ANY INVESTMENT DECISION
June 24, 2023 | Housing Inflation Keeping Central Banks Hawkish
Falling average hours worked is leading consumer demand lower while housing inflation is keeping central banks hawkish for longer than in past cycles. Nasty combo. Chris Harvey, Wells Fargo Securities head of equity strategy, and Frances Donald, Manulife Investment Management chief economist and strategist, join ‘The Exchange’ to discuss the case for a recession in […]
June 24, 2023 | Tech Talk for Saturday June 24th 2023
The Bottom Line Investors are expected to enter into a “holiday mood” this week prior to national holidays on July 1st in Canada and July 4th in the United States. Volume in equity markets on both sides of the border typically drops as the week progresses. Price volatility is higher than average. Broadly based North […]
June 23, 2023 | Core CPI in Japan Worst since 1981. Food Inflation Worst since 1976. But Energy Prices Plunge
The Bank of Japan has been the total outlier in its reaction to the surge of inflation: It’s still practicing QE under the guise of yield curve control, which keeps the 10-year yield below 0.5%; and it’s still pushing its short them yields below 0%. It’s clearly doing this on purpose, because these folks aren’t […]
June 23, 2023 | Which Of These Currencies Will Collapse First?
Inflation was supposed to moderate this year. But in the UK, EU, and Japan that’s not happening. Here’s the UK… … the EU… Euro rallies after ECB raises rates and inflation forecasts European policymakers now expect core inflation to average past the 5% mark, while in March projection this forecast was only at around 4.6%. […]
June 23, 2023 | The Bear Market is Still with Us
The bear market that started in early 2022 is still intact. Many pundits are making noise about a new bull market, but it is best to ignore those people. The stock market has not completed its full correction yet. What indicators confirm the bear market? A normal bear market lasts until valuations are reasonable again, […]
June 23, 2023 | Market “Fear Factor” At 3 Year Low
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June 23, 2023 | Near Half of New Canadian Mortgages Have Amortizations >30 Years
Near half of all new Canadian mortgages taken out in the first quarter of 2023 had amortization lengths longer than 30 years. In addition, as interest rates have leapt since 2022, a significant number of existing variable-rate mortgage holders have paid less than the interest owing, causing principal balances, repayment years and financial risk to […]
June 22, 2023 | UN’s Plan to Rule the World – The Summit for the Future & End of Individualism
Klaus Schwab is a control freak in how he runs the World Economic Forum. Make a single mistake and you are in trouble. Schwab seeks perfection and he is taking those ideas and seeking to indoctrinate the entire world. He has his young global leaders infiltrating governments around the world as we saw in […]
June 22, 2023 | Equifax: Canadian Business Revolving Debt is “Worrying Trend”
New data from Equifax shows that in the first quarter of 2023, Canadian businesses increased their credit card balances by 15 percent and lines of credit by 11 percent while the total balance outstanding on bank-issued installment loans fell 2.4 percent. See Businesses’ changing credit usage a “worrying trend”: Equifax. Jeff Brown, head of commercial solutions […]
June 22, 2023 | Could We See Higher Oil Prices Later This Year?
A “military misadventure” could skyrocket energy prices
June 22, 2023 | Could Markets Fall Towards Fall?
Commodities showing new life. Receive 50% Off VR Trader Newsletters! Enter Promo Code 2022HALFOFF.
June 22, 2023 | More Cyber Security Needed to Counter AI Hackers
Optimism as the US “re-industrializes”
June 22, 2023 | Major Cities in a Death Spiral
AI not the big deal it’s made out to be
June 21, 2023 | Kennedy Gains Traction
The Democrats said they would not host a presidential debate, so Robert F. Kennedy is starting his own. All eyes are on Kennedy right now after appearing on Joe Rogan. Rogan was accused of spreading misinformation by having Kennedy on his show, so he offered money to anyone who could disprove what was said. […]
June 21, 2023 | Becoming Invisible, Part 5: Your Phone Is A Surveillance Machine
This started as a post on how our phones are spying on us and what we can do about it. But it turns out that the first part — how they’re spying on us — is so big and complex that it needs its own post. So the “what we can do” part will come […]
June 21, 2023 | Home Buyer Math is Bonkers for Most
Many homes for sale in our area north of Toronto are priced in the $2 million range–many have been on the market for months now. If we do some math, we can appreciate why. Online calculators allow us to model numbers. To buy a $2,000,000 home with 20% down (400k) at a mortgage rate of 4.99% […]
June 20, 2023 | What You Get When You “Play Big
Wyndham Clark won the 2023 U.S. Open Golf Championship at the Los Angeles Country Club in Los Angeles, CA on Sunday, June 18, 2023. Clark, 29, made his pro debut in 2017 and this win was his first major championship. His Mom’s Words of Advice “Play big” is what […]
June 20, 2023 | Monetary Policy Magnifying Economic Downturn Most in Decades
The latest rebound in equity prices has pulled the S&P 500 and Canada’s TSX back to levels seen two years ago in June/July 2021. In the process, bullish sentiment among professional and retail participants is back to the highest readings since November 2021, and the spike in Google searches for “bull market” (below, since 2018, […]
June 20, 2023 | Another Stunning OCC Report
The new Office of the Comptroller of the Currency quarterly OTC derivatives report for positions held as of March 31 was, once again, a stunner. First, a few words on background about the report. This report is published by the OCC, a unit of the US Treasury Department, designed to highlight the Over the Counter […]
June 20, 2023 | When Will the World Wake Up?
QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; It makes no sense for Poland to support Ukraine when they refused to ever apologize for their slaughter of 100,000 of us in their ethnic cleansing under Bandara. The rumor is that Poland had hoped that Russia would defeat Ukraine and take the Donbas and that Poland would retake the Western part […]
June 19, 2023 | Why You Should Prepare Your Investment Portfolio for an Overbought Market
We are providing this commentary to non-paid subscribers because we believe it is crucial for all investors to understand the current state of market sentiment. In our weekly issues of the Trend Letter, we regularly update various sentiment indicators to keep our subscribers well-informed about market trends and, equally importantly, investor sentiment. Based on our […]
June 19, 2023 | Easy Money Makes You Stupid, Europe Edition
The eurozone is like a big Rube Goldberg machine sitting on a slab of bedrock called Germany. As long as the German economy — and the European Central Bank that Germany controls — are okay, then the currency union is viable. But recently several things have happened: Interest rates have spiked across the eurozone in response to […]
June 19, 2023 | NATO – The Greatest Threat to Europe & the World
We have all seen those videos of Killer Whales playing with their prey before killing it. This is sadly what is taking place with NATO. All these people do is promote war. Russia has no intention of invading Ukraine. It was indeed a special operation to secure the Donbas. NATO knows that but constantly pretends […]
June 19, 2023 | Scarce and Expensive Funding Brings Financial Sobriety
There’s a timeless adage that when money is cheap and easy, many people do dumb things with it. When money was free and easy (2010 through 2022), dumb things were all the rage. In 2021, $346 billion was handed out to startups by US venture capital firms alone, averaging more than $86 billion a […]
June 19, 2023 | Credit Slump
Happy Monday Morning! As mentioned in last weeks note, the great big housing boom is over. You see housing booms need credit, lots of it, to keep the wheels churning. The single largest driver of home prices over the past few years has been cheap and abundant credit. When money is basically free you tend to […]