April 16, 2025 | Poetic Justice For Private Equity

Private equity, like so many other Wall Street “innovations,” is a benign-sounding idea that has morphed into a kind of financial cancer. Let’s see if it kills the patient. First, the concept: Private equity refers to the practice of rich guys pooling their money and hunting for companies to buy. Once they get one, they […]

April 15, 2025 | War Fever in Europe Going Crazy

  COMMENT: Dear Marty! These are original advertising posters for war bonds from 1914-1918 from the former monarchy. I thought this might be of interest to you. I took the photos myself here. I hereby grant you all rights for publication on your blog. Many people all over the world owe you and your tireless […]

April 15, 2025 | Health Prepping: Did AI Just Cut Cancer Risk by 90%?

Artificial intelligence promises a lot of things. And sometimes it delivers. One possible case in point: Doctors Justus R. Hope and Paul E. Marik specialize in finding new uses for existing drugs, and recently asked an AI to look through all available studies (something way beyond the abilities of human researchers) involving supplements’ impact on cancer risk. […]

April 15, 2025 | Canada’s Housing Market Downturn Grinds into Year Four

Market consensus pegs a 58% probability that the Bank of Canada will hold its overnight rate at 2.75% tomorrow, with a 42% chance of a 25-bp cut to 2.50%. This morning’s milder-than-expected Canadian inflation news, CPI of 2.3% year-over-year in March, was welcome. Canada’s consumer carbon tax ends in April, and oil (WTIC) around $61 […]

April 14, 2025 | Confused? Join the Club: Inflation Plunges While Inflation Expectations Spike

Talk about cross-currents. Oil, which affects the cost of pretty much everything, is down about 15% so far this month. That’s extremely deflationary. Housing, meanwhile, is right up there with oil for its impact on the cost of living. And home price inflation is rapidly headed for zero overall, with many formerly hot markets already […]

April 14, 2025 | Rough Ride Exacting a Toll

Preliminary estimates show that the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment for the US plunged to 50.8 in April—below forecasts of 54.5—and the lowest level since June 2022. Consumer sentiment has fallen 40% since November 2024 (below since 1970, courtesy of The Financial Times).At the same time, tariff announcements drove year-ahead inflation expectations to 6.7% (from […]

April 14, 2025 | Bonds!

Happy Monday Morning! It’s a big week for mortgage shoppers. Fixed rates are on the move higher after unprecedented volatility in the bond market. Bond volatility as measured by the MOVE index touched as high as 172 intraday, levels only seen during times of turmoil (Oct 1998 LTCM collapse, Sep 2008 Lehman collapse, Mar 2023 […]

April 14, 2025 | US-China Tensions Rise – Tariffs not the Concern

  China and the United States are accustomed to trade wars. China is handling it as a business matter, but the bigger perceived threat is America’s involvement in the Taiwan Strait. The Chinese Defense Ministry issued a statement declaring that the United States has threatened national security by providing F-16 fighter aircraft to the Philippines […]

April 13, 2025 | The Uncertainty Recession

You probably noticed we are having one of those “weeks when decades happen.” Notice also, however, that we are still here. Your investments and businesses may be bruised but you’re still in the game. Fast-moving events are hard to cover in my letters. Anything I say could be rendered laughably wrong by the time you […]

April 13, 2025 | Living on the Edge

  The U.S.-China trade war is an ongoing economic conflict that began in January 2018, characterized by the imposition of tariffs and trade barriers by both countries. Recently, tensions escalated as the U.S. raised tariffs on Chinese goods to 145%, prompting China to retaliate with tariffs of 125% on U.S. imports, affecting global supply chains […]

April 13, 2025 | Time to Take Profits in Gold Mining Stocks? Jim Rickards Says Not Yet

Suddenly, gold miner shareholders have the problem everyone wants: They’ve made fairly serious recent money and now must decide whether to convert some of their paper profits to cash. Anyone who’s been round-tripped in a big position understands how serious this question is. Jim Rickards, author of a series of best-selling investment books, just weighed […]

April 13, 2025 | Round One vs. The Bear Goes to Trump

[Just ahead of last Monday’s steep plunge, I predicted here that an S&P reversal from 4820 would mark the end of the bear market. So far, SPX has rallied 646 points off an actual low at 4835. Bulls are not yet out of the woods, however, since a relapse could occur at any time. The stock market […]

April 12, 2025 | Trading Desk Notes for April 12, 2025

Fear trumps greed, but volatility is mean-reverting The cash S&P hit 15-month lows on Monday, down ~21% from February’s all-time highs. It then rallied ~13% to Wednesday’s highs as Trump paused tariffs on most countries other than China, where he dramatically increased tariffs. Last week’s big drop and this week’s big gain were among the most […]

April 12, 2025 | This Week in Money

• Martin Straith:  Stock Markets, Gold, Oil, USD, Canadian Dollar, Tariffs.
• Eric Hadik: (56:10) Market Cycles, Currencies, Bitcoin, Oil, War.  Read “17-Year Cycle & 4-Shadow: 20 – 25% Initial Plunge”.
• Hilliard MacBeth: (1:19:31) Canadian Real Estate, Home Equity.

April 12, 2025 | Tech Talk for Saturday April 12th 2025

The Bottom Line Wild week for world markets! World equity indices moved higher (S&P 500 up 10.8% from its low on Monday), commodity prices in U.S. Dollars soared (GSG up 6.3% from its low on Wednesday) and the U.S. Dollar Index moved lower (down 4.5% from its high on Monday to its low on Friday). […]

April 12, 2025 | 17-Year Cycle & 4-Shadow: 20 – 25% Initial Plunge

Outlook 2025 Eerie Parallels 02-27-25 – 2025 is a full 17-Year Cycle from the last major decline in the stock market (not including the ~2-month Covid plunge of 1Q 2020). 2025 is a full 17-Year Cycle from the inception of Bitcoin and the move toward decentralized banking. 2025 is two full 17-Year Cycles from the […]

April 11, 2025 | Markets Rally, Bonds Break, Gold Soars—What You Need to Know

Markets End Volatile Week with a Strong Rebound – April 11, 2025 Markets capped a wild week with a strong finish, shrugging off trade war shocks and riding a wave of optimism: Stocks Bounce Back: After days of volatility, the Dow surged 600 points (+1.6%), the S&P 500 climbed 1.8%—its best week since October 2023—and the […]

April 11, 2025 | White House Trade and Tariff Advisor Navarro Could Become a Scapegoat

Dr. Peter Navarro is the Harvard-educated PhD economist behind President Trump’s radical reciprocal tariff plan. Navarro pushed Trump to impose higher tariffs on almost every country, including an island that is inhabited only by penguins. But signs of disagreement over trade are mounting as Trump’s aggressive tariff moves trigger retaliation from many exporters, including China, […]

April 11, 2025 | ActBlue Scandal – Democratic Party Funded by Fraud

    ActBlue is a self-proclaimed grassroots fundraising platform for the Democratic Party. The Democrats want the public to believe that the everyday American fully supports them, but the truth has come to light after an ongoing investigation found that the organization has been upheld by dark money from both “foreign and domestic fraudulent actors.” […]

April 10, 2025 | Gold Miners: Great Q1 Earnings Coming

We’re heading into another earnings season, and with gold outperforming pretty much everything else, this one is looking even better for the miners than Q4. For context, here’s the XAU gold/silver miners index for the past six months. Note the nice run that started when excellent Q4 miner earnings combined with a rising gold price: And for […]

April 10, 2025 | Bouncing Downhill

Yesterday afternoon, news of a 90-day US trade tariff pause sparked jubilation in stock markets. The 9.5% bounce in the S&P 500 was the third-best day since 1950, and other indices followed suit. Lest we lack perspective, the other two best S&P 500 days were +12% on October 13, 2008, and +11% on October 28, […]

April 10, 2025 | Volatile Markets, Tariffs, Deportations, Vaccines

Gold, Silver, Exposing Corruption, Agenda 2030

April 10, 2025 | Markets – Some See Red, Others See Opportunity

Gold still a good bet in a volatile world

April 10, 2025 | This Market Crash Could be Worse Than  2008

Oil has broken below support levels